Delays to Frontier AI in the EU and UK
Lidiard, J., Vereschak, O., Gibbs, T., Anderljung, M.
Lidiard, J. et al. - Centre for the Governance of AI, 2026-06-28
Abstract
In recent years, frontier AI companies have sometimes delayed the release of new models to the EU and UK – or not released them at all. To what extent has this happened, and to what extent were regulatory barriers the cause? To investigate this, we collated and analyzed a dataset of 375 LLM releases by Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic over an eight-year period (June 2018 – May 2026), and used public sources to assess the most likely reason for delays or non-releases. By doing so, we hope to inform the design and implementation of AI regulation – in particular, how decision makers weigh regulatory objectives against the risk of models being delayed or withheld from their markets.