Future economy investor partnership SME competition round 8 briefing event

About the competition

The Innovate UK investor partnership programme tackles the challenges faced by highly innovative UK businesses with strong growth potential in accessing the finance required to grow and scale. It does this by leveraging Innovate UK’s expertise, connections and grant funding whilst encouraging commercial investors to provide finance and business acumen to younger businesses operating in underserved markets.

Innovate UK has selected a pool of 115 investor partners. These investor partners have demonstrated that they have the credibility, capability, capacity and appetite to invest in innovative, technology-led businesses that align with our programmes. The investor partnership programme will cover the breadth of the future economy, as described in Innovate UK’s plan for action, including net zero, health and wellbeing, next generation digital technologies and technology families. We will also target equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

The Future Economy investor partnership programme brings together:

• Innovate UK’s expertise in identifying innovation and using grant funding to change the risk profile of businesses.
• Investor partners’ aligned funding and expertise in identifying opportunities and teams that can best use extra investment finance.

This approach aims to provide you with support for research and development and access to the capital investment you need to develop and commercialise your innovations.

Click here to read more about the available funding (closing date: 14 August 2024).

The funding available in round 8 is limited, so only two specific themes are in scope. These are Creative Catalyst, which covers most areas in the creative industries, and Mindset, which covers extended reality for digital mental health.

About the Event

The investor partnerships programme will focus on support for innovation and access to investment across the future economy and in the area of equality, diversity and inclusion. We will explain more about the scope of the programme and describe the areas where we will have particular focus.

 Applicant SMEs will be required to already have significant interest from one of our selected investor partners before applying for grant funding for their proposed project. We will explain how you can find out more about, and connect with, our pool of investor partners and explain who can provide you with support to consider if you are ready for investment. We will also explain how to apply to this SME competition round or prepare for an application in a future round.