Entrants to this competition must be:

• Established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs
• UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base

Your project must:

• Have a grant funding request up to £60,000 (eligible costs only)
• Start 1 March 2027 and complete by 31 May 2027
• Carry out its project work in the UK
• Intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Any solution proposed should:

• Enable authorised users to work with selected cloud-based AI, estimating, design and manufacturing applications.
• Protect sensitive information before, during and after processing, including data uploaded to or generated by third-party tools.
• Provide clear user and administrator controls over access, sharing, retention and deletion.
• Support more than one software provider or demonstrate a credible route to broader interoperability.
• Fit within the workflows and resources of an SME operating in a regulated defence environment.
• Provide a cost model that is sustainable and materially more accessible than a dedicated sovereign-cloud environment.

Successful solutions should demonstrate:

• A representative workflow can be completed using an approved cloud application without uncontrolled disclosure of sensitive data.
• The solution produces auditable evidence of user access, data movement, processing and deletion.
• Security controls and residual risks can be clearly understood and assessed by the challenge holder and its customers.
• The pilot demonstrates a credible reduction in process time or manual effort.
• The commercial model supports broader adoption across multiple users and applications.

Any solution proposed should:

• Integrate, where appropriate, with the organisation’s private Microsoft 365 tenant and existing identity and access controls.
• Provide encryption in transit and at rest, strong authentication, role-based access, logging and auditable data handling.
• Offer transparent information about data location, subprocessors, retention, model training and deletion.
• Prevent customer data, prompts, files or outputs from being used to train public or shared models without explicit permission.
• Support risk assessment and evidence required for Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 27001 and relevant customer or contractual security obligations.
• Include mechanisms such as data minimisation, tokenisation, anonymisation, confidential computing, secure gateways or controlled workspaces where these improve assurance.
• Demonstrate how the approach contains, detects and responds to attempted data loss or unauthorised access.

• The solution must be suitable for routine use by engineering, estimating and manufacturing staff rather than specialist security personnel alone.
• It should operate with commonly available business connectivity and infrastructure.
• It should be capable of a controlled pilot using synthetic, anonymised or appropriately approved data before progression to live customer information.
• It should maintain acceptable performance for data-intensive engineering files and AI-supported workflows.

• Solutions that depend solely on policy, staff training or manual checking without a technical control.
• Unmodified use of public AI services with unclear data-processing or model-training arrangements.
• Approaches that require sensitive data to be knowingly exposed to uncontrolled jurisdictions or unauthorised third parties.
• Solutions whose cost or implementation burden is comparable to a dedicated sovereign cloud without demonstrating proportionate additional value.

Successful applicants will be given an opportunity to pitch to the Challenge Holder. The winning applicant, as selected by the company, will then be eligible to apply for up to £60,000 Innovate UK grant funding to kickstart the development of the proposed solution through a 3 month project. Selected solutions will be trialled by the Challenge holder where apropriate, with potential for further adoption if trials are successful.

The benefits package for a successful applicant may also include:

• Support from Innovate UK Business Connect
• Support in the development of a prototype or pilot
• Technical support
• Invitation to attend or present at Innovate UK Business Connect events
• A potential business collaboration
• Investor introductions (if investment is required)
• Support if any Innovate UK or similar competitions are relevant

• Challenge launch: 5 October 2026
• Deadline for applications: Friday 6 November 2026
• Review of applicants: Monday 9 – Friday 13 November 2026
• Selection and notification of finalists: Friday 13 – Tuesday 17 November 2026
• Pitch Day: Monday 30 November
• Confirm selected solution provider: By Friday 4 December 2026
• Submission to Innovation Funding Service (IFS): December 2026
• Project length: 3 months. (Starting by 1 March 2027 and complete no later than 31 May 2027)