Contracts for Innovation: DSbD Advancing CHERI RISC-V Devices

To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size
• work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)

Applicant organisations must:

• have an existing microcontroller or microprocessor system-on-chip device that they want to modify to be a CHERI-enabled device, or
• be currently developing, or have developed, a CHERI-enabled device and want to broaden its market applicability or accelerate its availability

A CHERI-enabled device is a system-on-chip silicon implementation that utilises the RISC-V architecture that implements the CHERI extensions as defined in the RISC-V Specification for CHERI Extensions.

Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

A single organisation may submit multiple applications in this 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.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

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).

Projects must:

• start by 1 September 2025
• end by 31 March 2028
• last between 6 and 31 months
• have total costs up to £1.5 million, inclusive of VAT, for stage 1
• have total costs between £500,000 and £3.5 million, inclusive of VAT, for stage 2

Stage 1 must complete by 31 March 2026. No time extensions for stage 1 milestones will be possible. All stage 2 milestones must be completed prior to 31 March 2028.

You must provide defined and measurable milestones including associated deliverables which must be clearly broken down with associated claims against stage 1 and stage 2 respectively.

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design.

A total of up to £10 million, inclusive of VAT, is allocated to this competition, across two stages. The funding budget is up to £3 million for stage 1 and up £7 million for stage 2.

Contracts will be awarded to projects with total eligible costs of up to £1.5 million, inclusive of VAT, in stage 1 and between £500,000 and £3.5 million, inclusive of VAT, in stage 2. Each project between 6 and 31 months.

Break Clause: The funding for the continuation of the Advancing CHERI RISC-V Devices projects is subject to a review by March 2026.

In the event that the decision is made to terminate the funding as a result of this review, there will be a 3 month notice period before the funding will stop. Innovate UK will not be able to fund any further project activity after the end of the notice period, and projects will stop at the end of stage 1 on 31 March 2026.

Projects who have not met their stage 1 milestones will be given a 30 day notice period before the funding for their project will stop. Innovate UK will not be able to fund further project activity after the end of the notice period, and projects who have not met their stage 1 milestones will stop on 31 March 2026.

Subject to meeting all stage 1 milestones, and funding being confirmed beyond March 2026, projects will continue into stage 2 delivery.

Although the risk of termination is expected to be low, it is crucial that applicants demonstrate they have considered this in their project plan. Projects should be designed in a way that ensures tangible and viable deliverables could be delivered by March 2026 should the funding be terminated.

The aim of the competition is to fund activities in maturing and growing the availability of commercial off the shelf implementations of CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) enabled devices for use in embedded computing.

The competition is supporting economic growth and societal resilience through accelerating the adoption and diffusion of the secure by design CHERI technology. Particular focus is being placed in the context of CHERI-enabled devices and the associated tooling and software components. Aiming to overcome the private sector’s underinvestment in protections for memory safety and compartmentalisation in embedded computing by creating CHERI-enabled devices that will enable software developers to adopt and commercialise a diversity of secured by design products and services.

Your project must focus on accelerating the availability of commercial-off-the-shelf CHERI-enabled devices. The goal is to broaden the availability of such devices for use by industry and software developers.

Projects are required to progress or accelerate the availability of CHERI-enabled devices and must:

• be supported and validated by a specific use case with a proposed customer,
• produce outputs to support the broader use of CHERI-enabled devices by businesses and software development communities

Applications must describe a credible and practical route to market to commercialise the developed CHERI-enabled device.

Portfolio approach

Contracts will be given to successful applicants for a variety of projects across different scope areas, activities, technologies, requirements and eligible project costs. We call this a portfolio approach.

Projects with a stronger relevance to CNI deployment will be prioritised during portfolio selection.

An online briefing will be held on Tuesday 20 May at 2pm: click here to register for a place.

If you want help to find an organisation to work with, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Electronics and Computing team.