Dates:
Competition closes: 11 December, 11am
Applicants notified: 07 February 2025
Project start date & duration: 01 May 2025, between 12 and 18 months duration
Scope
Projects must focus on digital technologies that can be applied in growing and emerging markets. The competition aims to provide support for R&D and access to the capital investment required to develop and commercialise innovations and grow businesses. Projects must help to grow innovation activities in the digital technology cluster in North East England, both during and after the project. Proposals must have a clear route to market and a clear link to innovation. Projects must demonstrate that, if funded, they will have significant market impact, be scalable, and be attractive to equity investors.
Specific Themes
Projects can focus on one or more of the following: Immersive technologies (extended reality, digital twins, games engines, virtual production), Artificial intelligence (data science, machine learning, neural networks, computer vision, robotics, large language models, quantum computing). Note this list is not exhaustive as long as proposals show clear alignment to the competition scope.
Projects that will not be funded
Those not carried out by SMEs, those not invited by one of Innovate UK’s investor partners, projects that are unable to demonstrate that there is potential for ROI and growth, projects with a large capital infrastructure. Collaborative R&D projects will not be funded.
Eligibility
- Subsidy Control and EC State Aid funding rules apply
- Must be a UK registered SME and R&D work must be carried out in the UK and project results exploited from UK.
- Must be invited to apply by your investor partner and have agreed your proposal with your investor partner before submitting.
- Be able to complete the aligned investment before the start of your project and have sufficient capital resources to enable you to meet all your project’s eligible costs.
- Subcontractors must be UK based, with costs justified and appropriate to the total costs.
Funding Rates
- Feasibility Studies: £50,000 and £300,000; 6-12 months duration
- Industrial Research: £100,000-£1million; 6-18 months duration
- Experimental Research: £250,000-£2million; 12-18 months duration
| Organisation size | Feasibility
(TRL 2-3) |
Industrial Research (TRL3-5) | Experimental Development
(TRL 6-7) |
| Micro/small business | <70% | <70% | <45% |
| Medium sized business | <60% | <60% | <35% |
How PNO can support you
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK national schemes and EU programmes.
For further information or to discuss a project idea please contact PNO Consultants
0161 488 3488 | info.uk@pnoconsultants.com | https://www.pnoconsultants.com/uk/
