To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size. The consortium must contain at least one UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME) claiming grant funding on this application.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A business can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible.

An eligible business that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. If not leading, an organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £1 million and £3 million
• last between 12 and 24 months
• start by 1 December 2026
• end by 30 November 2028

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

No single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total project costs.

Sensing and measurement technologies are critical across many aspects of modern life and industry from healthcare to critical national infrastructure. Quantum technologies will provide new capabilities and transform performance of existing products and services, for real world benefits across areas such as defence, transport, and healthcare.

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the adoption of quantum enabled position, navigation, and timing (PNT) and sensing technologies by addressing specific technical and commercial barriers.

Your project must identify one or more barriers to adoption for a quantum technology in a specific use case and propose an innovative solution to address them.

Your project must:

• outline one or more technical or commercial barriers and describe how this impedes customer adoption of your quantum enabled technology
• deliver an innovative, competitive solution to this barrier
• demonstrate the feasibility and commercial viability of the solution

Activities such as field trials, proof of concept demonstrations, and other means of facilitating end user or customer engagement should be considered the primary objectives of your proposal, alongside any required technical developments.

We encourage projects that:

• propose new or significantly extend existing use cases
• co-develop the solution with an end user
• integrate quantum enabled technologies with existing user technologies, platforms, or workflows
• deploy quantum enabled technologies in representative operational settings or challenging environments

Your project must exploit the capabilities of second generation quantum technologies. These are defined as those involving the generation and coherent control of quantum states, resulting in phenomena such as superposition or entanglement. We consider technologies involving single photon generation and detection to be in scope.

Your project must focus on one of the following technological themes:

• quantum enabled sensing for healthcare
• quantum enabled PNT
• quantum enabled sensing for transport, telecoms, energy, or defence

In line with our portfolio approach, we may fund a greater proportion of projects in one theme than another, depending on the quality and distribution of applications received.

We are not funding projects that:

• do not aim to accelerate adoption of quantum technologies
• do not identify a specific barrier to adoption for a specific use case
• do not focus on a specific quantum enabled sensing or PNT technology
• are not original in scope and duplicate someone else’s work
• are covered by existing commercial agreements, including from UK Government or international initiatives
• do not use second generation quantum technologies

An applicant briefing was held on 10 August: a recording will appear here when available.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Quantum team.