The FCA's AI sandbox opens its second cohort, with GPUs and Claude
July 17, 2026 · by Eve Harper
Part of the archive: a retrospective issue compiled after the fact so the record is complete. It was not sent to subscribers.
This is the week the regulatory and AI pillars stopped being separate stories. The UK's FCA launched the second cohort of its Supercharged Sandbox, and it looks less like a policy programme and more like an AI lab with a rulebook.
I have a soft spot for this one. It is the clearest sign yet that regulators want to test AI in the open rather than legislate it from a distance.
What moved
FCA Supercharged Sandbox, cohort 2, is live
On July 13 the FCA launched cohort 2 of its Supercharged Sandbox, an AI-testing programme with GPU-enabled cloud infrastructure and datasets. Participants also get access to Anthropic's Claude, including Claude Code and Claude Cowork, through an FCA collaboration. Demand was real: 199 applications, a 51% increase on cohort 1, with 21 organisations selected. A regulator handing firms GPUs and a frontier model to experiment with is a genuinely new posture.
Plaid adds Check report controls and IDV fields
On the enterprise side, July 17 brought a quieter Plaid update: a hide_gse_details parameter and expanded webhook fields for Plaid Check Consumer Report, plus a user.ip_address field on the Identity Verification create endpoint. Minor, but if you run Plaid Check it changes what data lands in your webhook.
Regulators are becoming sandbox operators
For years a regulatory sandbox meant a legal carve-out: permission to test a product with real customers under supervision. The FCA is quietly redefining it as infrastructure. Cohort 2 ships GPUs, datasets and a frontier model alongside the legal cover. That matters for how you read the regulatory pillar on this site: the line between a programme you apply to and a place you actually run code is blurring, and the UK is furthest along. The showcase demo day is set for November 26 and access runs to the end of the year, so this cohort's output is worth watching.
Worth a click
- FCA Supercharged Sandbox ↗ Dates, selection numbers and how the programme works.
A regulator with GPUs. What a time. Eve
Sources: FCA Supercharged Sandbox ↗, Plaid changelog ↗