To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size or a research and technology organisation (RTO).

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with two businesses of any size.

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)

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

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

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £1 million and £3.5 million
• last between 24 and 36 months
• start from 1 January 2027
• end by 31 December 2029

You must ensure that no single partner accounts for more than 75% of the total eligible costs.

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.

The aim of this funding is to solve critical system development challenges in hardware and associated software technologies required for universal fault tolerant quantum computing platforms.

Your project must:

• identify one or more pre-requisite capabilities and specification of a universal fault tolerant computer that your project will target
• demonstrate the feasibility and performance of hardware and the associated software solutions to satisfy scale, programmability, and application runtime requirements for the universal fault tolerant quantum computer
• validate the innovative technologies, industrial processes and hardware solution to address the capability gaps
• clearly describe the relevant performance and impact roadmap

We encourage projects that:

• demonstrate commercially viable industrial manufacturing and assembly processes to build hardware devices for the quantum computer in the UK
• co-develop the technical solution with industrial partners and full stack integrators of quantum computers in the UK

The project scope and eligibility criteria are technology agnostic with respect to qubit modality, including superconducting, trapped ion, neutral atom, photonic, spin, or other.

Your project must be directly relevant to the exploitation of second generation quantum technologies for universal fault tolerant quantum computing applications.

Second generation quantum technologies are defined as those involving the generation and coherent control of quantum states, resulting in phenomena such as superposition or entanglement. Technologies involving single photon generation and detection are considered in scope.

Your project can focus on translating hardware technologies into practical products that are relevant to one or more of the following capability gaps:

• verifiable and uniform below threshold error rate across the qubit package
• scalable control, input and output channel architecture for the specified qubit package
• minimising latency and maximising throughput of the quantum syndrome processing cycle, including encode, measure, readout and decode operations for application runtime performance at scale
• modular interconnect and qubit networking for achieving critical rate and fidelity performance across the distributed qubit package

Exclusions

We are not funding projects that:

• do not identify specific capability gaps and solutions for universal fault tolerant quantum computers
• do not focus on developing a hardware solution relevant for universal fault tolerant quantum computers
• duplicate someone else’s project scope and definition
• duplicate existing commercial agreements, including from UK Government or other international agencies

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing at 2pm on Tuesday 7 July: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

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