CyberASAP has achieved a significant commercial milestone, with alumni from previous cohorts securing more than £75 million in follow-on funding. This financial milestone demonstrates high levels of investor confidence and confirms the substantial commercial potential of university-led cyber security innovations.

Funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and delivered by Innovate UK, CyberASAP has simultaneously entered its tenth year of operation with a new group of academic teams having joined the programme.

Sustained commercial impact

Reaching more than £75 million in post-programme funding serves as proof of the initiative’s long-term capability within the UK research and development landscape. This track record confirms that academic research can successfully transition into viable commercial entities when provided with targeted acceleration support.

To date, the programme has supported academics from more than 83 UK universities, leading to the formation of 45 commercial companies alongside multiple technology licensing agreements. Entering its tenth year of delivery, demonstrating a mature, sustained pathway that has steadily built bridges between academic institutions and the commercial market.

Several established spinouts have contributed to this funding milestone. Notable successes include CAPSLOCK, who secured private venture capital and scaling investment after participating in the accelerator.

CyberASAP gave us the confidence, language and process to talk about our business to investors, customers and each other. It also gave us a grounding in the commercial side of things, such as pitching, understanding customers, and thinking about a route to market.

These were concepts that we hadn’t had to consider before. These skills stayed with us, and when we built CAPSLOCK, they helped us significantly in how we approached things.

Ten years on, it’s great to see so many founders developing successful businesses

– Dr Andrea Cullen MBE, Co-founder, CAPSLOCK

Commercial application and support

CyberASAP provides a structured framework that helps academic cyber security research move towards practical commercial application. The programme addresses the critical gap between academic exploration and market entry by developing essential business skills among research teams.

Participants receive specialised guidance in market validation, value proposition development, and commercial awareness. The programme introduces academic innovators to essential professional networks, including industry mentors, strategic partners, and potential investors.

By focusing on customer discovery and the validation of specific use cases, CyberASAP allows teams to assess the viability of their technology before embarking on the commercialisation journey. This process ensures that the resulting innovations directly align with current commercial demands and UK security needs.

Emma Fadlon and Robin Kennedy, Co-Directors, CyberASAP at Innovate UK Business Connect, highlighted the significance of the funding benchmark:

“We are supported by a fantastic network of sector leaders and commercialisation experts. Their collective insights have guided our participants and alumni to ensure the technologies being developed are aligned to real-world threats and commercial opportunities.

Over the past decade, this support has helped alumni turn promising research into investment-ready businesses, unlocking growth, attracting significant follow-on funding and contributing to the programme’s wider impact. As cyber threats continue to evolve, we’re proud that the outcomes from the programme have, in their own way, helped make all our lives that little bit safer.”

The next generation: Year 10

The arrival of the Year 10 cohort demonstrates that this commercial pipeline remains active and highly relevant to current sector challenges. The milestone year brings together an exceptionally broad range of academic talent, with 24 new teams entering the programme.

Reflecting the expanding boundaries of modern cyber security, this year’s participants are addressing critical vulnerabilities across a range of highly specialised industrial and societal sectors.

Among the innovations joining the programme are safety and security solutions designed for drone technologies, alongside new methods for encrypting sensitive data within the healthcare sector. These projects will leverage the market validation phase of CyberASAP to align their technical architectures with the procurement, safety, and regulatory compliance requirements of their respective industries.

Together, these projects illustrate how emerging cyber security challenges across sectors continue to feed into the programme’s commercialisation pipeline.

Industry-led guidance

The long-term value and commercial viability of the programme is further verified by external industry mentors who support the market readiness of the cohorts.

CyberASAP Mentor Jake Holloway CEO of Craid.AI stated:

“CyberASAP has performed remarkably for ten years, taking UK academics and their research and turning them into functioning, investable businesses with real products. This bridging of the most difficult gap in building start-ups works because the programme leaders have always prioritised bringing in external industry practitioners as assessors, mentors and workshop leaders.”

Continuous momentum

The Year 10 cohort is now progressing through the initial phases of the programme, focusing on value proposition development and extensive customer discovery. This active participation ensures that the momentum of commercial cyber security technology moving from UK academic institutions into the marketplace remains continuous.

To mark ten years of CyberASAP, alumni, investors, industry partners and supporters from across the network will come together on 1 October at the QEII Centre in London. The event will also feature Baroness Gustafsson of Chesterton CBE, bringing perspectives from entrepreneurship, cyber security, investment and public policy as attendees discuss the future of commercialising cutting-edge cyber security research in the UK.