Innovation Loans: Round 22

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation is offering loans to micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (SME). Innovate UK innovation loans are for highly innovative late-stage research and development (R&D) projects with the best potential for the future. There must be a clear route to commercialisation and economic impact.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following themes or sub-themes:

Net Zero

• Energy
• Impact of industrial processes and use of materials
• Agriculture and food and other sources of emissions
• Capital intensity

Health and Wellbeing

• Tackling ill health
• Enhancing wellbeing
• Diet and food

Next Generation Digital Technologies

Technology Families

• Advanced materials and manufacturing
• Artificial intelligence digital and advanced computing
• Bioinformatics and genomics
• Engineering biology
• Electronics, photonics, and quantum technologies
• Energy and environment technologies
• Robotics and smart machines

This competition allows you to include a pre-commercial work package within your project. This will allow you to include some of the new eligible costs that will help you to take your project innovation to market and are over and above typical R&D costs.

New eligible costs that can be included in the pre-commercialisation work package include labour, market testing, real-world validation, initial tooling or production scale-up, capital usage, and up to 20% working capital where it supports commercialisation. Loans can cover up to 100% of eligible project costs.

Round 23 will open on 28 August 2025 and will close on 22 October 2025.