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UK businesses to get £125m innovation boost

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UK businesses to get £125m innovation boost
PENRYN, ENGLAND - MAY 09: A engineer checks on parts for a robot being built at Engineered Arts at the company's headquarters in Penryn on May 9, 2018 in Cornwall, England. Founded in 2004, the Cornish company operating from an industrial unit near Falmouth, is a world leader in life sized commercial available humanoid robots for entertainment, information, education and research. The company has successfully sold its the fully interactive and multilingual RoboThespian and the smaller SociBot robot around the world to science centres, theme parks and visitor attractions, and also to academic and commercial research groups where they are used as research and development platforms. However, more recently the company has been building a range of lifelike bio-mechanical Mesmer robots. Built on the sensors and the extensive software framework already developed for RoboThespian, the Mesmer robots can offer some of the smartest animatronics on the market, giving extensive interaction but can also move very smoothly, quietly and naturally too. Developed using Engineered Arts own animation software 'Virtual Robot', Mesmer characters can be fictional, or faithful recreations of real-world people with accuracy possible to the last pore or finest of hairs.(Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

UK businesses will receive a £125m cash boost from the government to help them turn their bright ideas into money-spinners, City PM can reveal.

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The government will add £100m of the sum to its “smart grant” programme that looks to help businesses take ideas from the concept stage to the market. The other £25m will be available through Innovate UK, the government’s innovation agency.

The new money comes at a time when employers have been critical of the government’s approach to Brexit. Last month the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said last month that firms were “increasingly being left with our heads in our hands” over political uncertainty and issues such as reporting requirements.

But business secretary Greg Clark said today that the government was “backing our homegrown businesses” with more funding, helping them “boost productivity and create jobs, growth and opportunity”.

The government said it has “has invested over £2.2bn in more than 11,000 projects focusing on technological innovation” over the last 12 months.

Businesses are able to submit their innovative ideas to receive some of the funding announced today to help them with research and development and marketing tactics.

Previous recipients include machine learning company Magic Pony Technology, which was bought by Twitter for $150m (£120m). The social media giant was attracted to its technology that could understand features of imagery.

Photocentric, a 3D printing company that expects to sell over £8m of its products by 2020, also benefited from “smart grant” funding.

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Ian Campbell, executive chair of Innovate UK, said the grants and loans schemes “are popular with businesses because they help great ideas get to market faster”.