Investor Partnerships – digital technologies, North East: Rd 2

This competition is open to single applicants only.

To apply your organisation must:

• be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized business (SME)
• carry out all its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• be invited to apply by your investor partner
• have discussed and agreed your proposal with your investor partner before submitting your application
• have sufficient capital resources to enable you to meet all your project’s eligible costs, including through the grant funding and the aligned investment

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Innovation and ideas can come from anyone and anywhere. We want to see investments unlocked for the diverse and extraordinary talent in the UK. We encourage innovation involving communities that are typically under-represented, including:

• from regions that have historically accessed lower levels of investment (outside London, Oxford and Cambridge)
• ethnic minority groups
• women and other marginalised genders
• disabled people
• people with non-traditional education backgrounds

An SME can only submit one application into this round of the competition.

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

The eligibility criteria will depend on your research category.

For feasibility studies projects:

• your total project costs must be between £50,000 and £300,000
• your project duration must be between 6 and 12 months

For industrial research projects:

• your total project costs must be between £100,000 and £1 million
• your project duration must be between 6 and 12 months

For experimental development projects:

• your total project costs must be between £250,000 and £2 million
• your project duration must be between 12 and 18 months

For all projects, your project must:

• not start before 1 September 2025
• end by 31 March 2027

Your project will only be allowed to start once the aligned investment has been confirmed. The amount invested must be at least equal to your grant funding request for feasibility studies and industrial research, and at least double for experimental development projects.

Innovate UK provide support for your investment readiness and for engaging with suitable investors via Innovate UK Business Growth and Innovate UK Business Connect.

In the first instance you should contact Innovate UK Business Growth for support in understanding your readiness for investment and also to look at your wider strategy for growth.

You should also contact Innovate UK Business Connect to establish if there are specific programmes for connecting businesses in your sector to relevant investors. Support and connections to sector specific investors may also be provided by the relevant Catapult centre.

The aim of this competition is to provide you with support for research and development and access to the capital investment you need to develop and commercialise your innovations.

You must have gained a level of traction with one of Innovate UK’s investor partners. We will contact them to confirm they are likely to make an offer of investment if you have a successful application to Innovate UK.

Your proposal must have a clear route to market, a clear link to innovation and evidence that you can create a team to deliver your proposal.

You must demonstrate that if your project is funded, it will:

• have significant market impact
• be scalable
• be attractive to equity investors

Your project must help to grow your innovation activities in the digital technology cluster in North East England, both during and after the project.

(For this competition, North East of England is defined by the geography of the North East Combined Authority which includes Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and County Durham.)

This could be demonstrated by:

• your local innovation activities
• the value that your innovation activities create in the cluster
• your engagement with other innovation active organisations in the cluster, such as with Innovation SuperNetwork, this Launchpad’s cluster management organisation

Your application may be considered ineligible if you do not describe clearly how your main project activities and work packages meet the scope of this competition. This includes the main project activities of any subcontractors. If you do not describe how your activities in the cluster will continue after your project then you are unlikely to be offered funding in this competition.

Your project must focus on digital technologies that can be applied in growing and emerging markets.

Growing or emerging markets, include but are not limited to:

• advanced manufacturing
• agriculture and forestry
• automotive and transportation
• creative industries
• culture, tourism, leisure and sport
• green industries
• health
• offshore industries
• retail and town centre

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

Immersive technologies:

• extended reality
• digital twins
• games engines
• virtual production

Artificial intelligence:

• data science
• machine learning
• neural networks
• computer vision
• robotics
• large language models
• quantum computing

This list is not exhaustive. Where you can show your proposal fits within the scope of this competition you can focus on other themes.

An online briefing event will be held at 2:30pm on Monday 3 March: click here to register for a place.

Contact Innovate UK Business Growth for support in understanding your readiness for investment, and contact Innovate UK Business Connect for support in finding an investment partner.