The Agentic AI Pioneers Prize

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is launching a £1 million Prize Fund. This initiative aims to accelerate the adoption of Agentic AI for design across Advanced Manufacturing, Health and Life Sciences, and the Creative Industries.

Finalists will be promoted through a national communications campaign and winners will be awarded at an event with government and industry attendance.

Scope

This is an Expression of Interest (EOI) competition. You must be selected at EOI to be invited to the Phase 2, Development Phase. Full challenge statements will be released at the start of Phase 2.

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the adoption of Agentic AI in design across three key UK growth sectors:

Advanced Manufacturing
Health & Life Sciences
Creative Industries

Innovate UK are looking for practical, demonstrable solutions with a clear path to real-world deployment in the UK.

During the Phase 2 development phase, you will be expected to develop and evidence single or multi-agent solutions. These must directly address one of the sector challenges, show measurable improvement against the evaluation criteria, and demonstrate innovation in model development and data curation.

By 23 February 2026, you must submit a Project Report that includes:

Project summary
High-level approach for the technical solution
User and workflow fit
MVP and Integration readiness
Risks, Assurance and Explainability
Potential commercial impact and UK benefit
Future potential and scalability

Innovate UK define Agentic AI in design as AI systems that take initiative, co-creating ideas, automating tasks, collaborating with humans, and coordinating complex systems to enhance the design process.

Agentic AI in Design could include use case such as:

Conceptual Ideation and Discovery: Agentic AI can act as a co-designer, helping teams explore ideas faster and more creatively
Process Automation: AI agents can streamline repetitive or complex engineering tasks reducing cost and time
Human-AI Collaboration: Agentic AI can act as a design partner or reviewer to improve quality concurrently
Lifecycle & Systems Engineering: Agentic AI can coordinate across subsystems to orchestrate simulations and generate digital records

Specific Themes

The finalised challenge statements will be shared with shortlisted applicants.

The examples provided below are illustrative only, they represent the types of problems you may be solving, not the exact statements.

Health and Life Sciences examples:

Smarter Drug Discovery: AI to suggest promising new compounds with clear reasons and simple steps to make them, speeding up early-stage R&D.
Next-Gen Material Recipes: AI to recommend formulations and process settings to hit strength or heat-resistance targets faster.
Smarter Cell and Gene Therapy Development: AI models optimise vector design, cell-culture conditions and process parameters to improve yield, viability and transduction efficiency, reducing experimental cycles and accelerating time from discovery to clinical manufacturing.

Advanced Manufacturing examples:

Innovative product definitions: Agents perform multidisciplinary topological and topographical optimisation driving improvement around performance, sustainability, manufacturability and cost.
Smarter factory planning: AI recommends machine selection, location and virtual commissioning to meet deadlines with fewer changeovers and lower energy use.
Proactive assurance: AI manages validation and verification activities, managing change, concession and inspection outcomes and impacts – catching issues earlier with less effort.

Creative Industries examples:

Generative Storyboarding Assistant: AI interprets scripts or briefs and autonomously generates visual storyboards, suggesting camera angles, scene compositions, and transitions.
Fashion Design Co-Creator: AI proposes garment styles, materials, and patterns based on mood boards, trend data, and sustainability goals.
Architectural Space Planning: AI suggests floor plans that meet your brief and improve daylight, flow, and usable space.

Eligibility

To be eligible to participate, you must:

demonstrate relevant expertise in Agentic AI, particularly in its application to design settings
hold in-house Agentic AI capability at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 or higher, with IP control of the core codebase
commit to carrying out all participation activities within the UK
intend to exploit the results in or from the UK

Innovate UK does not take any interest or ownership of any Intellectual property (IP) rights. Where you are collaborating, you are expected to agree background and foreground IP arrangements between yourselves before the demonstration phase.

This competition is open to single applicants and collaborations.

Innovate UK will not accept consortia containing more than three organisations.

Lead organisation

To lead a consortium, your organisation must be a UK-registered business of any size.

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

The lead will be the contracting party for any subsequent prize award.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead organisation, you must be a UK-registered organisation.

Your consortium cannot include more than one large organisation.

A collaboration can include up to three organisations in total (the lead plus up to two partners)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS.

Number of applications

A business may lead only one application but can be a partner on up to two further applications. If collaborating you can only be part of three applications.

If you wish to withdraw an application before the EOI deadline, please email support@iuk.ukri.org

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

Funding Costs

This Expression of Interest (EOI) is phase one of the Pioneers Prize fund competition.

The total prize fund is £1 million.

Prizes are awarded following panel review against published criteria.

No financial support is provided during the competition phases.

Up to four cash prizes will be awarded to the top-performing solutions for:

Advanced Manufacturing: First prize £250,000
Health & Life Sciences: First prize £250,000
Creative Industries: First prize £250,000

A further £250,000 will be awarded to the best of best solution out of the three winners

Payment and conditions

Prizes are paid to the lead organisation only. The Lead is there to act as the recipient of the Prize and will be responsible for distributing the Prize funding to all other partners. This is known as a ‘hub and spoke’ model.

Awards will be made under the UK Subsidy Control framework.

Innovate UK reserve the right to adjust allocations under exceptional circumstances, for example in response to policy changes or wider government decisions.

Back

R&D Tax Credits

Grant Funding

Other Services

Insights

Events