Dates:
- Competition closes: 8 May 2024, 12pm
- Applicants notified: 25 June 2024
- Project start date & duration: start by 1 October 2024, projects must last between 4 and 6 months
Scope
Solutions must increase business productivity within the following priority sectors:
- Creative
- Construction
- Agriculture and Food Processing
- Transportation (including Logistics and Warehousing)
This competition supports the Government’s goals in the National AI Strategy in the transition to an AI-enabled economy through wider AI adoption across sectors.
Proposals must be an AI solution, address a business challenge in one of the priority sectors above and demonstrate an increase in business productivity with your chosen sector.
Specific Themes
Projects can focus on one or more of the following: data driven decision making; automation of administrative tasks; project management optimisation; supply chain optimisation and forecast models; waste management; intellectual property (IP) management; design.
Projects that will not be funded
Projects that: are in marketing and advertising, do not demonstrate increase in business productivity, are carrying out their project work outside of the UK, do not intend to exploit the results within the UK, have total project costs that do not match total grant funding requested.
Eligibility
- Subsidy Control and EC State Aid funding rules apply
- Must be collaborative projects led by a UK-registered business SME facing a challenge/opportunity to be addressed in collaboration with one other UK-registered SME or academic institution.
- Project work must be carried out in the UK and project results exploited from UK.
- Subcontractors are allowed, preferably UK-based, but limited to no more than 20% of each project partner’s total grant request, with appropriate and justified costs.
Funding Rates
- Total eligible project costs between £25,000 and £50,000 (£5M pot), 4-6 months duration
| Organisation size | Feasibility (TRL 2-3) |
|---|---|
| Micro/small business | 100% |
| Medium sized business | 100% |
Total project costs detailed within your application must not exceed the maximum project size
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.
