Consortia must include:

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

To ensure genuine international collaboration, rather than internal company research, affiliated companies within the consortium will be treated as a single entity under their parent company. UK entities must not be linked to the Swiss partners or vice versa.

An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications and if not leading, can collaborate in any number of applications.

• At least one business entity from each country (UK and Switzerland)
• at least one grant claiming UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME) if the business entity above is not an SME
• and at least one research institute from either UK or Switzerland. Exception: If the Swiss applicant is an individual start-up (pre-market and <50 FTE employees), the requirement to include a research institute is waived.

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Your UK project must:

No single country may contribute more than 70% or less than 30% of the total cost or the total person-months dedicated to the project. Person-months refers to the cumulative time (in months) allocated by staff to the project. (Definition: One person-month = 154 hours of full-time work).

The majority of the project work must be undertaken in the UK and Switzerland. UK project partners must carry out the majority of their project work in the UK and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

• have a maximum grant funding request of £450,000
• last between 18 and 36 months
• start on 1 February 2027
• end by 31 January 2030
• involve at least one grant claiming UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME)

The aim is to support UK and Swiss collaborations and capabilities in emerging fields, thereby enhancing their global growth prospects. Proposals must contribute to the development of commercial products, processes and / or technical services with significant market potential for the UK and Switzerland.

our collaborative R&D proposal must demonstrate:

Aligning the common objectives of project consortia with the funding criteria of both agencies will increase the likelihood of funding success.

• a clear game changing or disruptive innovative idea leading to new products, processes or services
• a strong and deliverable business proposal within your application that addresses and documents market potential and needs
• sound, practical financial plans and timelines
• good value for money and how you intend to deliver significant economic impact, return on investment (ROI) and growth through commercialisation within two to three years of project completion
• clear potential to significantly benefit the UK economy or national productivity
• the benefit of participants from the countries working together and how this adds value
• a clear definition of where intellectual property (IP) can be used and shared between the participants and countries
• a clear route to market within two to three years of project completion

This call is open exclusively to UK and Swiss collaborators and ONLY in the following three focus areas:

Applications in any other technology area will not be eligible for evaluation.

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

Semiconductors: Applications of particular interest:

Engineering Biology: Applications where the core innovation is in engineered biological systems, for example, built on synthetic biology techniques:

Life Sciences

(details to follow)

• Semiconductors
• Life Sciences
• Engineering Biology

• Compute: AI chips and accelerators for training, inference and edge use, including architectures and chip design, spanning CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, AI ASICs; key technology trends in this area include chiplets, heterogeneous integration, 3D packaging, novel computer architectures such as neuromorphic computing, and photonic approaches to improve bandwidth, latency and energy efficiency
• Photonic interconnects and data movement: chip to chip, board and system level connectivity, including integrated photonics and co‑packaged optics, as well as memory and data storage technologies which are increasingly critical to scaling AI systems
• Sensing: sensors and front end devices that generate and pre-process data for AI systems, including vision, radar, lidar, RF based sensing and photonic sensing where they deliver advantages in speed, precision or energy efficiency
• Power and energy systems: power electronics that make use of advanced materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride for efficiency and thermal management, and which are fundamental to scalable, cost effective and sustainable AI compute

• Biotechnology and genetic engineering platforms
• Bio-based production and bioprocesses, including food and agrifood applications
• Bio-engineered medical and diagnostic solutions
• ClimateTech or CleanTech applications

The search for project partners is supported and organised by Enterprise Europe Network Switzerland and Innovate UK Business Connect.

If you are in the UK and would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Global Alliance, Semiconductors, Engineering Biology or Health (for Life Sciences) teams.

Innovate UK will hold an applicant briefing webinar at 10am UK time (11am CET) on Tuesday 23 June: click here to register for a webinar place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Global Alliance, Semiconductors, Engineering Biology or Health (for Life Sciences) teams.