£30 million Fast Start boost for cutting-edge start-ups

Innovate UK is launching a brand new series of grants worth £30 million to back innovative UK businesses in fast starting innovation and boosting the UK economy.

Fast Start: Innovation grants

Innovate UK’s new series of Fast Start: Innovation grants will give hundreds of UK small and micro-businesses the opportunity to grow and realise their ideas faster.

These grants, of up to £50,000 each, will provide a fast way to boost cash flow, helping to propel those highly innovative ideas that have a clear route to commercialisation.

Innovation solving big challenges

Grants will back innovations in one or more of the seven technology areas outlined in the government’s Innovation Strategy:

• advanced materials and manufacturing
• artificial intelligence, digital and advanced computing
• bioinformatics and genomics
• engineering biology
• electronics, photonics and quantum
• energy and environment technologies
• robotics and smart machine.

Innovate UK will also ask businesses to consider how their innovation could be part of solving specific challenges of net zero and self-driven healthcare and wellbeing.

Benefitting businesses not previously funded

Fast Start: Innovation grants will only be offered to businesses that have not previously received Innovate UK funding.

This will ensure Innovate UK is reaching new and more diverse innovative businesses with high growth potential.

Businesses who are offered grant funding, will also be offered tailored business support through Innovate UK EDGE.

Realising the potential of ideas

Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, said:

Innovate UK has listened carefully to innovative businesses across the UK, and the new Fast Start scheme is one of the actions that is being taken to help small businesses more rapidly realise the potential of their ideas.

Fast Start funding will help to develop new innovative products, processes, and services, in sectors that will be key to the UK’s future economic growth and productivity.

Competition opens 11 July

This exciting new competition opens for applications 11 to 26 July.