Efficient, Structured and Controllable AI Systems

UK registered SME businesses can apply for a share of up to £1.66 million to deliver experimental validation of prototype AI systems for novel reusable components of efficient, structured and controllable learning systems. Total funding: £1.66 million Minimum award: £50,000 Maximum award: £150,000 Location: National Who can apply: Private Sector Closing date: 2026-11-18 11:00 (UK time) Eligibility Who can apply Your project Your project must: - have total costs of between £50,000 and £150,000 - last between 1 and 3 months - start by 1 April 2027 - end by 30 June 2027 Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK. Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date. You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. Lead organisation To work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME). More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules. Subcontractors Subcontractors are not allowed in this competition. Number of applications An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible. 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, ad Summary Description Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £1.66 million on industrial research for novel reusable AI mechanisms. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received. The aim of this competition is to advance the development of novel reusable artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms that will form the foundations for the next generation of AI and machine learning (ML) systems of the future. The driving strategic imperative is that future capabilities beyond the current state of the art, require fundamentally different underlying architectures and learning systems to advance beyond current limitations. Resource adaptive learning mechanisms, intervention tested and counterfactual prediction, graph-native learning topologies and representation modelling for scalable primitive learning components are fundamental components for adaptive scalable learning systems. We will fund UK SMEs to experimentally validate novel AI mechanisms that could underpin future generations of efficient, structured, adaptive and controllable AI systems. For this competition, novel mechanistic AI means an AI or ML system in which the prin Objectives Your proposal The aim of this competition is to advance the development of novel reusable artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms that will form the foundations for the next generation of AI and machine learning (ML) systems of the future. Your project must drive development of a new core AI or ML technology by establishing experimental evidence for a new architecture, learning process, representation or control mechanism. The technology developed must have the potential to underpin capabilities Dates 16 October 2026 Online briefing event: join at 11am (Briefing slides will be available to download from Supporting Information after the event) 20 January 2027 Applicants notified 1 April 2027 Project start by How to apply Text update 7 October 2026: further scorin