European Quantum Technology CR&D 2024

There must be a ‘project lead’ and this must be an eligible UK or international organisation. The project lead is responsible for managing the entire project.

The ‘lead applicant’, is the organisation that starts the application on the Innovation Funding Service. This must be a UK organisation.

UK lead applicant

To start an application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS), your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

To be eligible to claim grant funding from Innovate UK your collaboration must:

• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• collaborate with at least one European Union Member State registered organisation, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners

You may choose to invite organisations from other countries outside of the European Union Member States.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A UK registered business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have a maximum grant funding request of £600,000
• start by 1 December 2024
• end by 31 May 2026
• last between 12 and 18 months

UK project partners must carry out the majority of their project work in the UK and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK and the European Union.

The consortium must include at least one business registered in a European Union Member State that is a separate legal entity and not linked to the UK partners. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.

Your project must demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.

No one country or project partner can represent more than 70% of the total project costs.

Your proposal must demonstrate a clear intention to commercially exploit the results of the project domestically or globally.

The aim of this competition is to facilitate collaboration between the UK and international organisations, and in particular entities in the EU, in order to accelerate research and innovation in quantum technologies and remove technological and market barriers to their successful commercialisation and adoption in the UK and internationally.

The focus of the programme is to increase research and innovation collaborations between the UK and international organisations in quantum technologies, with a particular focus on EU markets.

Your project must demonstrate:

• a clear game-changing or disruptive innovative idea leading to new products, processes or services
• a strong and deliverable business proposal within your application that addresses and documents, market potential and needs
• sound, practical financial plans and timelines
• good value for money
• how you intend to deliver significant economic impact, return on investment (ROI) and growth through commercialisation, within two to three years of project completion
• clear potential to significantly benefit the UK economy or national productivity
• the benefit of participants from the countries working together and how this adds value
• a clear definition of where intellectual property (IP) can be used and shared between the participants and countries
• a clear route to market within two to three years of project completion

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• quantum sensing for applications such as industrial instrumentation, clinical devices, imaging, resource mapping, geological or oceanographic survey
• industrial products, processes, or services to advance scalable solutions such as chip scale quantum, photonic and optoelectronic systems for applied quantum technologies
• technologies for scaling quantum compute, for example, but not limited to, qubit processor, switching, networking, control systems, cryogenics

Innovate UK Business Connect will hold an online competition briefing on Thursday 16 May, 10am-11am UK time: click here to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Quantum team or our European team.