Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in innovation projects.
Funding for this opportunity is subject to business case approval by the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and HM Treasury.
These will be to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) driven solutions that address a business challenge or opportunity in target industry sectors:
The aim of this competition is to support innovative projects prompted by a challenge to business in an area of operations that can drive improvements in business productivity.
This competition supports the Government’s goals in the National AI Strategy in the transition to an AI-enabled economy through wider AI adoption across sectors.
Your proposal must:
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
Eligibility
Your project
Your project must:
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
If your project’s grant funding request or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.
If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
You will be made ineligible if you exceed the Minimal Financial Assistance limit. You must submit a complete declaration as part of your application.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
Your partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by you as the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, your partner will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs and complete their own Project impact questions into the Innovation Funding Service.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and the other eligible organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.
We expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
Number of applications
The lead SME can only be involved in one application.
If an SME is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to two applications.
If you are successful in both applications you will be contacted and will need to justify you have the resources to deliver both projects.
An academic institution can collaborate on any number of applications.
The aim of this competition is to support innovative projects prompted by a challenge to business in an area of operations that can drive improvements in business productivity.
Your project must:
Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, markets, technological maturities. We call this a portfolio approach
Specific themes
Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
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