AI Champions: Frontier AI Phase 1
Funding of up to £3 million for UK‑registered micro, small and medium‑sized businesses to conduct frontier artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) feasibility studies.
This competition opens on 17 March 2026 and closes at 11am on 29 April 2026.
Who it is for
This competition is open to single applicants only.
To work alone, your organisation must be a UK-registered SME.
Your project must be in one of the following four areas:
- AI-enabled health and life sciences
- advanced materials with AI
- secure AI for national security and defence
- fundamental AI
Your project must:
- have total costs between £150,000 and £250,000
- last between three to six months
- start by 1st August 2026
- end 31st January 2027
Support you can get
This competition aims to support ambitious AI and ML innovations grounded in strong scientific evidence and engineering breakthroughs, with the potential to become scalable products and services that will create and shape new markets.
This is phase 1 of a potential three‑phase competition. Phase 1 aims to de‑risk early‑stage technologies (TRL 3 or below) and generate robust evidence to support future scale‑up.
You can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
- 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
- 60% if you are a medium-sized organisation
- 50% if you are a large organisation
Successful phase 1 applicants may be eligible to apply for a separate phase 2 competition, offering funding of up to £1 million for demonstrator development.
Funding for phase 2 and phase 3 is subject to business case approval.
Support organisers
- Innovate UK