Commercialising quantum technology: large collaborative projects round 1

Key Features

UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £27 million to collaborate on developing quantum products and services. This funding is from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £27 million

Opens: 5th Aug 2019

Closes: 30th Oct 2019

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

The aim of the competition is to advance the commercialisation of quantum technologies in the UK through the investment of up to £27 million in innovation projects. Projects should focus on one or more of the following technical challenges:

  • connectivity
  • situational awareness
  • computing

Scope

Your proposal must identify a clear market opportunity and an innovative project that exploits it.

The project must:

  • demonstrate a commercially viable solution
  • provide evidence of performance
  • include an end-user assessment
  • provide a roadmap of future exploitation

The project must also exploit second generation quantum techniques. These are defined as the generation or clear control and manipulation of quantum states, resulting in superposition and entanglement (single photo generation/detection and quantum computing are in scope).

You must describe how project metrics will be collected. Such metrics must include:

  • investment in addition to the project partner matched funding
  • capital investment

You must address at least one of the following:

  1. Connectivity: techniques for securing data in storage and in flight.
  2. Situational Awareness: Autonomous systems. Sensors and detectors for the built environment, transport and infrastructure. Imaging and sensing “seeing things currently invisible”.
  3. Computing: Transformational computers for solving currently intractable problems.

Innovate UK are particularly encouraging applications that:

  • involve consortia which span the supply chain of component suppliers, system integrators, and end user businesses
  • focus on maximising UK return from the quantum technology research undertaken by the UK academic base
  • bring significant new investment and businesses into the UK’s growing quantum technologies sector
  • develop the quantum computing industry sector (hardware, components, simulators, algorithms and software) in the UK

Eligibility

Projects must be collaborative and involve a micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME).

To lead a project your organisation must:

  • be a UK based business of any size
  • collaborate with other businesses, research organisations, RTOs, public sector organisations or charities
  • involve at least one SME
  • carry out its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To collaborate with the lead organisation you must:

  • be a UK based business, academic institution, charity, public sector organisation or RTO
  • carry out your project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • be invited to take part by the lead applicant
  • enter your costs as part of the application

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.

You should make sure that your participation in a project does not prevent any intellectual property (IP) generated by the project from being exploited in the UK.

Funding Costs

There is up to £27 million allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £2 million and £10 million.

For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small business
  • up to 60% if you are a medium-sized business
  • up to 50% if you are a large business

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small business
  • up to 35% if you are a medium-sized business
  • up to 25% if you are a large business

The research organisations in your consortium can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation, this maximum is shared between them.

Projects must last between 18 and 36 months and must start on or before June 2020.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that do not exploit second generation quantum techniques.