UK BUSINESS AI UNIVERSE: Safety: Frontier model evaluation

Owner or parent

independent; a Public Benefit Corporation as of 2026 (footer: EIN 93-4310599, Delaware, USA)

Founded or opened

Not stated on pages opened

Lab director or lead

Marius Hobbhahn — CEO and Co-Founder

Other leaders

Chris Akin — COO; Dr Charlotte Stix — Chief Governance Officer; Alexander Meinke — Head of Research; Jérémy Scheurer — Member of Technical Staff (Science); Rusheb Shah — Member of Technical Staff (Infrastructure & Security)

Site and address as published

London base not stated on pages opened (LISA lists Apollo as a resident); San Francisco office opened 2026; Washington DC office planned for June 2026

Headcount

Not stated. San Francisco office: 3 people, aiming for 10+ by the end of 2026 — 13 May 2026 (single source)

What it does

An AI safety organisation focused on "scheming", meaning AI systems covertly pursuing goals their developers did not intend. It studies the science of scheming, runs evaluations for frontier developers, works on governance of loss of control and internal deployment, and sells Watcher, a tool that monitors AI coding agents and can block unsafe actions.

Research groups or focus

Science (science of scheming; evaluations now second priority); Monitoring & Product; Governance (loss of control, internal deployment, automated AI R&D); Infrastructure & Security; Operations

Notable outputs

Watcher — control and security for coding-agent deployments, with Watcher Live (real-time blocking) and Watcher Analyze (observability) — 2026; pre-deployment testing of OpenAI's o1 — Dec 2024; anti-scheming research with OpenAI — date not stated

Selected papers

"Frontier Models are Capable of In-context Scheming" (Meinke, Schoen, Scheurer, Balesni, Shah, Hobbhahn) — arXiv — 6 Dec 2024 (v2 14 Jan 2025) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04984 ; "Behind Closed Doors: A Primer on the Governance of Internal Deployment" — Apollo Research — date not stated — https://www.apolloresearch.ai/governance/ai-behind-closed-doors-a-primer-on-the-governance-of-internal-deployment/ ; "The Loss of Control Playbook: Degrees, Dynamics, and Preparedness" — arXiv — date not stated — https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.15846 (link taken from Apollo's May 2026 update; I did not open the arXiv page to match it to the title) ; chapter on loss of control in the International AI Safety Report 2026, led by Charlotte Stix — 2026 — https://internationalaisafetyreport.org/publication/international-ai-safety-report-2026

Partners named

OpenAI — pre-deployment testing of o1, and anti-scheming research; UK Frontier AI Taskforce — policy recommendations; EU AI Office; a UN Advisory Body; US Congress

Uk government links

shared policy recommendations with the UK Frontier AI Taskforce

Status now

Active: now a Public Benefit Corporation, with a San Francisco office and a planned Washington office.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source (status change to PBC from Apollo's own page only).

Sources

1. apolloresearch.ai/about
2. apolloresearch.ai/blog/apollo-update-may-2026
3. arxiv.org/abs/2412.04984
4. safeai.org.uk/