Engineering Biology Investor Partnerships Round 1

Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £8 million in this Engineering Biology Investor Partnership competition. This competition is part of UKRI’s Engineering Biology Programme.

The aim of this competition is to support:

• the development and adoption of engineering biology technologies
• commercialisation of late stage experimental development projects that are close to market, and ultimately market adoption

To be offered grant funding your project must be assessed as eligible for grant funding and you must have secured aligned investment with a lead investor. In the investor pool you can view the areas of expertise and investment preferences for the investors.

You can apply for this competition before you speak to an investor but initiating dialogue with investors is strongly encouraged.

In addition to investment, the lead investors in the pool can provide you with commercial acumen in, for example:

• leadership
• market access
• skills
• resources

Successful UK registered SME’s will receive:

• grant funding from Innovate UK
• aligned investment funding with one of the programme’s pool of investors acting as the lead investor

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.

Experience from similar competitions suggests that you could have 20% chance of success.

We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny.

We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.