‘£2m grant funding for new tech companies in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Telford

Are you a business in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin developing a business around AR, VR or AI technology?

Innovate UK has partnered with 11 private investment firms to offer £2 million grant funding alongside equity investment for immersive R&D projects.

Immersive technology blurs the lines between the physical and digital worlds, such as augmented reality, artificial intelligence and virtual reality and is an industry which generates £660 million in sales every year.

As many as half a million people are employed by companies participating in the immersive economy. Despite this, there is currently a gap in angel and early-seed investment into immersive businesses – a critical point of a new business’s growth.

To help businesses overcome this barrier and boost the UK economy, Innovate UK is working with 11 investor partners to offer simultaneous grant funding and venture capital investment in early-stage projects led by UK companies.

Grant funding is provided through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund‘s audience of the future programme, delivered by UK Research and Innovation. By bringing together creative businesses, researchers and technology experts to adopt, exploit and develop immersive technologies, the challenge is growing the UK’s leading market position in creative content.

This competition is open to companies engaged in producing immersive content, delivering new immersive products, services or platforms, or developing novel immersive software, hardware or devices.

• enhancing, extending or transforming the immersive audience experience
• new immersive content production tools, software and systems
• VR, AR and other digital technologies to deepen and enrich the immersive experience
• Innovate UK will fund up to 70% of projects for micro or small businesses, and up to 60% for medium-sized businesses. The remaining project costs need to come from one of this competition’s investor partners.

• the competition will open on 20 May 2019
• the competition will close on 3 July 2019
• up to £2 million including VAT in grant funding is available
• your project’s total eligible costs must be between £150,000 and £300,000
• you must be a UK-based micro, small or medium-sized enterprise working in immersive technology, and carry out your project in the UK
• applicants must commit to co-investment from one of the investor partners

Find out more about this competition and apply.