Feasibility Studies for Artificial Intelligence Solutions in the UK

Deadline: 24-May-23

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million in grant funding to deliver feasibility studies. These studies will be to develop innovative solutions using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address business challenges and opportunities.

The aim of this competition is to support innovative projects prompted by a challenge to business in an area of operations that can drive improvements in business productivity.

Your project must:

• be a feasibility study to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven solutions
• address a business challenge in construction, transport including logistics and warehousing, creative industries or agriculture and food processing
• demonstrate an increase in business productivity
• be a collaboration between an organisation seeking to adopt AI to address a business challenge or opportunity, with an organisation that can develop AI to help address this opportunity

Specific Themes

• Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
  • data driven decision making
  • automation of administrative tasks
  • project management optimization
  • supply chain optimisation and forecast models
  • waste management
  • intellectual property (IP) management
  • design

Funding Information

• Your project’s grant funding request must be between £25,000 and £50,000.

Projects they will not Fund

• They are not funding projects:
  • in marketing and advertising
  • that do not demonstrate increase in business productivity
• They cannot fund projects that:
  • involve primary production in fishery and aquaculture
  • involve primary production in agriculture
  • have activities relating to the purchase of road freight transport
  • are not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
  • are not eligible to receive Minimal Financial Assistance
  • are dependent on export performance, for example giving an award to a baker on the condition that they export a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example if they give an award to a baker on the condition that they use 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • have a grant funding request between £25,000 and £50,000
    • start by 1 September 2023
    • end by 29 February 2024
    • last between 4 and 6 months
    • carry out its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
  • be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
  • collaborate with one other UK micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) or academic institution
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • academic institution
  • Your partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by you as the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, your partner will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs and complete their own Project impact questions into the Innovation Funding Service.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and the other eligible organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.
  • They expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
• Number of applications
  • The lead SME can only be involved in one application.
  • If an SME is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to two applications.
  • If you are successful in both applications you will be contacted and will need to justify you have the resources to deliver both projects.
  • An academic institution can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.