The Alternative Investment Market (AIM) was launched on the 19th of June 1995 as a submarket of the LSE (London Stock Exchange). It is a replacement for the previous USM (Unlisted Securities Market) that had been in operation since 1980.
The AIM allows smaller companies with low liquidity and demand/supply to be traded at a specific time of the day with a more flexible regulatory system than is applicable to the main market. This means that orders with instruments that are part of the AIM will be executed differently than the ones part of the main LSE market. At the moment, we don't have any direct access to Market Makers, and due to the low liquidity and volume of such instruments, it's possible that orders might not execute at the actions for days or even weeks.
The FTSE Group maintains three indices for measuring the AIM, which are the FTSE AIM UK 50 Index, FTSE AIM 100 Index, and FTSE AIM All-Share Index.