Funding opportunities and collaboration

Where your project aligns to our strategic business goals and there is funding available, we may offer an up to 50% discounted rate (or match-funding) to work with us, covering up to half the cost of our expert’s time and required equipment use. 

All offers of match-funding are at our teams’ discretion and such funding is never guaranteed. 

By match-funding your project, we are making an investment in your business growth using UK Government funds. Your business will own up to 100% of the foreground intellectual property, variable based on local funding agreements. 

All offers of match-funding carry a requirement to allow us to talk about the project publicly as part of our press engagement or case study content to attract more SMEs to the service. 

This can also benefit your business, as it provides a platform for your new offering or improved performance. 

We are committed to your success and will not release any commercially sensitive information as part of this public engagement, unless expressly agreed with you. 

If your business challenge serves a wider industry need or policy objective of UK Government, we may offer to use our global connections across industry, academia and government to help source a group or consortium of partners for the project. 

The partners will produce a joint bid for competitive funding calls, such as those advertised by Innovate UK, to cover our collective costs. 

If successful, these funding arrangements often have requirements in the ownership of intellectual property, publicity of project results, and other areas. 

If you think this option is possible for a particular public funding call, early engagement with us is key. 

Because of the range and scale of partners in such a project, the results are often far-reaching and could help your business to lead your target market. 

Many of these projects are known as collaborative research and development (R&D). 

A consortium for a collaborative R&D project will typically involve you as an SME alongside bigger industry partners, universities and other research and technology organisations similar to the HVM Catapult. 

A collaborative R&D project needs the contribution of all partners as part of match-funding, meaning that you will need to offer an amount of your time or resources to the project as a contribution in-kind.