With a focus on the highest potential companies and a holistic approach to tailored support, Innovate UK will help the next generation of tech businesses thrive.
This will help to deliver growth and improve lives and livelihoods throughout the UK.
Innovate UK will also become a trusted due diligence engine for the UK’s deep tech ecosystem.
Investors can be confident that when it backs a company, the hard technical work has already been done, speeding up access to capital.
The strategic reset is outlined in a new prospectus published today (19 March 2026) during UK Tech Week.
Focus on six priority sections
Innovate UK will focus on six priority sectors:
- advanced manufacturing
- clean energy industries
- creative industries
- defence
- life sciences
- digital and technologies
The digital and technologies sector includes six frontier technologies:
- artificial intelligence
- advanced connectivity
- cybersecurity
- engineering biology
- semiconductors
- quantum
Within these sectors, Innovate UK will prioritise deep tech businesses with the potential to create transformational change.
World-leading quantum sector
Quantum technologies offer a strong example of where UK companies are well placed to lead the world.
After more than a decade of sustained public investment, the UK quantum sector is world-leading.
This week the UK became the first country to commit to advanced procurement for large-scale quantum computers by the early 2030s.
The economic opportunity, in terms of growth, jobs and entirely new kinds of work, is substantial.
New specialist teams and services
To deliver this ambition, Innovate UK is creating specialist growth sector teams that will serve as the engines of its offer.
A new account management service, Velocity, will launch to support high-potential businesses throughout their innovation journey, from first engagement with Innovate UK through to capital raising and beyond.
Accelerating commercialisation
This new approach aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovation, helping companies turn promising technologies into scalable growth.
When Innovate UK endorses a company, investors can be assured that rigorous technical due diligence has already been done, making it a trusted gateway into the UK’s deep tech ecosystem.
This will help de-risk investment decisions, crowd in private capital and change the trajectory of the UK’s most promising businesses in ways that the market alone cannot.
Helping investors and businesses
Innovate UK will actively prepare both sides of the investment relationship: building investment-ready businesses while briefing investors on what is coming through the pipeline.
This ensures that when a company is ready to raise investment, the right investors already know who they are and why they matter.
To identify and commercalise promising technologies, Innovate UK works closely with:
- UK Research and Innovation’s research councils
- Advanced Research and Invention Agency
- private sector innovators
- universities
- major research institutes
- the Catapult Network
It is also strengthening connections with:
- British Business Bank
- National Wealth Fund
- National Security Strategic Investment Fund
- the wider private investment community
Tailored support
Innovate UK will provide an integrated, end-to-end offer built around the needs of each business, not a one-size-fits-all intervention.
Funding grants and loans will be calibrated to stage and risk, scaling from early-stage support through to increased backing as businesses prove performance.
Backing UK’s most promising innovators
Tom Adeyoola, Innovate UK’s Executive Chair, said:
The UK has one of the strongest research bases in the world.
Yet we do not have as many globally-scaled companies to represent that strength.
Why is that so, and what is stopping our big ideas from becoming big businesses?
We excel at making discoveries, generating intellectual property, spinning out and starting up.
Yet when it comes to scaling, too many innovative businesses fail, stall or move overseas.
Innovation is in our blood – but we must focus on industrialising it, because fast-growing businesses are what drive real economic value.
He added:
Innovate UK’s vision is a UK in which breakthrough ideas – from research, from labs, from anywhere in this country – can create industry leaders and giants.
We are here to back the UK’s most promising innovators: giving them the support, validation, connections and capital pathways that, together with others, help them to start, scale and stay in the UK.
Promising for UK innovation
Laura Citron OBE, Chief Executive Officer of London & Partners, London’s growth agency, said:
We’ve heard many visions over the years about tackling the UK’s scale-up challenge, but this new strategy from Innovate UK feels genuinely different.
It’s clear on its role and has a real sense of strategic intent.
It aligns strongly with London’s focus on frontier innovation.
The ‘no wrong door’ navigation and the deep account management for the highest potential businesses feels particularly important.
Overall, this is very promising for UK innovation.
