Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency, has created a BridgeAI programme to act upon the UK government’s National AI Strategy to increase the adoption and diffusion of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions in high growth but low AI maturity sectors, including construction
The £100m BridgeAI investment is an evidenced-based programme that harnesses the strengths of the UK AI ecosystem to address, among others, two primary market failures: the lack of skills limiting adoption, including educational elements about the technology itself in adopting sectors, and the low number of AI developer organisations offering AI-based products and services for low AI maturity sectors.
The programme has two strands with distinct but augmenting impact. A £35m investment is seeking to increase sector capability and capacity to absorb AI technologies. This is delivered in collaboration with Innovate UK KTN and the creation of an Innovation Network that will build networks between AI adopting and developer organisations, and key strategic partners including the Alan Turing Institute, Hartree Centre and Digital Catapult, who will offer a range of products to organisations that seek to adopt AI technologies to support them in their journey in understanding and evaluating AI benefits and piloting these technologies.
These services are provided at no cost to the businesses and among the different range of support includes access to innovation vouchers, AI and ML awareness courses for senior management, access to independent scientific advice and technology accelerator programmes.
UKRI’s Technology Missions Fund (TMF) will see an additional £250m invested in the themes of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and engineering biology. One of the first major investments following the creation of the Department of Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) will help exploit and sustain the UK’s global leadership in these areas, ensuring it remains a developer and innovator of these technologies, not just a consumer.
The second strand of the programme involves a £65m investment from UKRI’s Technology Missions Fund (TMF) that seeks to develop new and innovative AI and ML solutions that have a positive impact on business productivity. The strand is being delivered via competitive grant funding support and involves three main interventions.
One intervention is a £5m investment to help AI adopter SME organisations collaborate with either an AI developer SME or an academic to solve business challenge or opportunity that can increase business productivity. This funding opportunity is currently live and applications will be open until Wednesday 24 May.
Another round of £5m investment will be announced in March 2024 with similar scope. Furthermore, an opportunity open to both SME and large organisations for collaborative R&D projects will be announced in September 2023, with a total funding allocation of £35m for R&D projects that can harness the power of AI. Innovate UK will be announcing further support during the summer of 2023 to help build an evidenced-based resource of use cases for AI and ML solutions that can increase business productivity in our target sectors in engagement with the industry.
BridgeAI launch event
The formal announcement of the BridgeAI programme will take place in London on 26 April and organisations can register to attend in person or virtually or the event.
Available opportunities will be publicised on the KTN BridgeAI website as they become available and the first round of support is expected to be publicised in May on the KTN BridgeAI site. We encourage organisations interested to engage in the programme to visit this site and register their expression of interest to engage.
Other important timelines that business should be aware of is support for data and AI readiness that will be announced in April 2024 to help businesses identify opportunities within their organisation to deploy AI and lastly, the duration of support from the BridgeAI programme will be available until March 2026.
We are excited in being in a position to support UK businesses transform the way they are working through the adoption of artificial intelligence and we encourage active engagement with the programme via Innovate UK KTN so that we can keep adapting our support to help you increase business productivity and bring economic prosperity to the UK economy.
These investments will help maintain and grow the UK’s international position in a highly competitive global market. Success will attract diverse global talent and incentivise further private investment in the UK’s research and innovation system, ensuring greater UK advantage comes from the country’s strengths in science and technology.
Trias Gkikopoulos
Innovation lead – robotics & artificial intelligence
Innovate UK
Tel: +44 (0)3333 403250
