To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size that is UK registered or has a UK registered office
• work alone or with others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector, that are UK registered or have a UK registered office, as subcontractors

This competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

Exclusions

Innovate UK will not fund projects that:

• do not use ‘second generation’ quantum technologies defined as those involving the generation and coherent control of quantum states, resulting in phenomena such as superposition or entanglement
• do not demonstrate significant support and engagement from potential future customers throughout the project
• do not address how any potentially negative outcomes (such as on the environment or society) would be managed
• do not evidence the potential for their proposed innovation to generate positive economic or societal impact
• would directly duplicate other UK government or EU funded initiatives you have already been funded to deliver
• are covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions
• are feasibility studies or are low maturity in their development
• are undertaken by organisations that are not UK registered or do not have a UK registered office

Funding Costs

A total of up to £25 million inclusive of VAT, is allocated to this competition.

The total funding available for the competition can change.

The funders want to fund a variety of projects across different markets, themes, technologies, technology maturities, locations, industrial sectors, project sizes, exploitation potential and business sizes.

The contract is completed at the end of the competition, and the successful organisation is expected to pursue commercialisation of their solution.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering your project costs.

VAT is the responsibility of the invoicing business. Innovate UK will not provide any further advice and suggest you seek independent advice from HMRC.

VAT registered

If you select you are VAT registered, you must enter your project costs exclusive of VAT. As part of the application process VAT will be automatically calculated and added to your project cost total. Your total project costs must not exceed £7million.

Not VAT registered

If you select you are not VAT registered, you must enter your project costs exclusive of VAT and no VAT will be added. You will not be able to increase total project costs to cover VAT later should you become VAT registered. Your total project costs must not exceed £7million.

Research and development

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service. This lets you incorporate the results of your exploration and design and demonstrate that you can produce in quantity to acceptable quality standards.

R&D does not include:

• commercial development activities such as quantity production
• supply to establish commercial viability or to recover R&D costs
• integration, customisation or incremental adaptations and improvements to existing products or processes

Innovate UK competitions involve procurement of R&D services at a fair market value and are not subject to subsidy control criteria that typically apply to grant funding.