Innovate UK is offering sensing SMEs a flat £80,420 grant at 100% funding, closing 7 October

Innovate UK is running a pilot that pays a single, fixed grant of £80,420 to UK SMEs building measurement, sensing or instrumentation technology, at 100% of eligible costs and with no match funding required. Applications close at 11am UK time on Wednesday 7 October 2026.

That combination is rare. Most Innovate UK grants cover a percentage of a project’s costs and leave the applicant to find the rest, and most require a consortium. This one does neither. The brief states plainly that “your total costs will be eligible for up to 100% funding subject to MFA subsidy rules” and that applicants “must apply for 100% funding”.

The Advanced Manufacturing: Measurement and Sensing Pilot opened on Wednesday 26 August 2026, with up to £1 million allocated from the UKRI Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chains programme.

The exact figure, and what it buys

The grant request has to be precise. “Your grant funding request in your application must be exactly £80,420,” Innovate UK states. That splits into £75,000 of grant funding drawn down against eligible costs and £5,420 towards Innovate UK Business Connect support. The grant request must match total costs, and an application whose total costs exceed £80,420 is made ineligible.

Support runs for nine months. Funded activities must start by 1 March 2027 and end no later than 30 November 2027, and participation must start on the first of a month. Successful applicants draw down funding based on need and by agreement with Innovate UK across the nine-month period.

The money comes with obligations beyond the technical work. Innovate UK states that participation “will require an investment of time and resource” and that successful applicants are expected to engage with support activities including peer to peer networking, investor engagement and international market exploration.

Who qualifies

To join the pilot, the applicant must be a UK-registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise. An eligible business can submit only one application, and any further applications from the same organisation are made ineligible. Subcontractors are allowed and can be based anywhere in the UK, with overseas subcontractors requiring a justification; Innovate UK states it “will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor”.

The scope test is narrower than the funding terms are generous. The business must be developing a technology, product or service based on measurement, sensing or instrumentation that solves a specific problem faced by advanced manufacturing supply chains, and that problem must relate to improving productivity, resource efficiency or resilience. The supply chain must be at least one of automotive, aerospace, battery, space, or the commercial production of advanced materials. Innovate UK is explicit that “this pilot is not funding projects” - the assessment is of the business, not a discrete piece of R&D.

One eligibility ceiling is worth checking before applying. The grant is awarded as Minimal Financial Assistance, which allows public bodies to award up to £315,000 to an enterprise in a three-year rolling financial period, made up of the elapsed part of the current financial year and the two financial years immediately preceding it. An applicant that exceeds that limit is made ineligible, and previous funding must be declared in the application.

Innovate UK held a briefing event on 10 September 2026 and will notify applicants by 18 December 2026.

A second route, on a longer clock

A UK company that misses the October window has a further Innovate UK competition running well into December. UK-Singapore CRD 2026 opened on Monday 24 August 2026 with up to £3 million available, and closes at 11am on Wednesday 16 December 2026.

Grant requests there run between £100,000 and £900,000 per project. The lead must be a UK-registered business of any size, and the consortium must include at least one Singapore-registered business that is a separate legal entity not linked to the UK partners - a condition Innovate UK explains exists “to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research”. The Singapore partner receives no Innovate UK money and applies separately to the equivalent Enterprise Singapore programme, and the project must be independently selected by both agencies to be funded.

Its Digital and Technologies sector covers “frontier technologies including: Semiconductors, Quantum, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Advanced Connectivity Technologies and Engineering Biology”, alongside advanced manufacturing, clean energy and life sciences. Projects must last between 24 and 36 months, cannot start before 1 May 2027 and must end by 30 April 2030, with applicants notified on 26 February 2027.

Neither route replaces commercial capital. Grants of this size typically sit alongside the equity and tax routes a hardware company uses at pre-seed and seed, and non-dilutive money claimed early can extend runway ahead of a priced round.