Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, has selected a pool of investor partners.

These investor partners have demonstrated that they have the credibility, capability, capacity and appetite to invest in innovative, technology-led businesses that align with our programmes.

These programmes will focus on the future economy as described in our plan for action.

The future economy investor partnership programme brings together:

• Innovate UK’s expertise in identifying innovation and using grant funding to change the risk profile of businesses
• investor partners’ aligned funding and expertise in identifying opportunities and teams that can best use extra investment finance

This approach aims to provide you with support for research and development and access to the capital investment you need to develop and commercialise your innovations.

Innovate UK provides support for your investment readiness and for engaging with suitable investors through Innovate UK Business Growth and Innovate UK Business Connect. In the first instance you should contact Innovate UK Business Growth for support in understanding your readiness for investment and also to look at your wider strategy for growth.

You should also contact Innovate UK Business Connect to establish if there are specific programmes for connecting businesses in your sector to relevant investors. Support and connections to sector specific investors can also be provided by the relevant Catapults.

You will need to establish a relationship and a level of investment traction with one of our approved investor partners before you apply for funding. A full list of selected investor partners is provided at Innovate UK Investor Partners – UKRI and Innovate UK Business Connect investor partnerships websites.

The investor partner must have confirmed with you that you are in a position to apply for grant funding as you will be asked to identify them in the application.

To be successful, your project must be independently assessed by Innovate UK as fundable and receive aligned investment directly, led or catalysed by the investor partner identified in your application.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.

The funding available in this round is limited, so only three specific themes are in scope. These are Creative Catalyst and Mindset. These are described in the Scope section.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.