Every pound, mapped.
58+ schemes. 9 regions. £2.8 billion deployable this fiscal year. Every grant, equity scheme, ARIA programme, accelerator, VC, loan and tax credit open to UK founders, sorted by stage, sector and geography.
Three findings the launch announcements tend to leave out. Each one links to a UK government source.
London, Cambridge and Oxford take most of it by value, though only about 30% of high-growth firms are based there. Regional schemes exist to narrow the gap. NPIF II, MEIF and the Scottish National Investment Bank are the main ones.1
Plan your working capital around that. Since the April 2024 merger the effective rate sits at about 16.2%. Loss-makers that qualify as R&D-intensive can reach 27%.2
Success rates sit around 11%. Assessors most often point to the quality of the writing as the thing that decides it. Applying early in the cycle helps.3
1British Business Bank, Small Business Equity Tracker 2025. 2HMRC, R&D Tax Credits Statistics 2024. 3UKRI, Innovate UK Smart Grants Performance 2023–25. Figures rounded; full sources listed in footer.
Most founders lose weeks reading criteria they were never going to meet. Filter by what you have: a stage, a sector and a number.
UK founders rarely fund a company in one transaction. Most stack it: a grant pays for the prototype, the first hires come out of an SEIS round, EIS carries the seed, and growth equity only shows up once there is traction behind it.
Read horizontally. Bar widths show the upper bound of what gets raised at each step, on a log scale. SEIS and EIS stack on top of grants and equity rounds.
UK industrial strategy pushes non-dilutive capital towards a small number of frontier areas. These six have the clearest named funding pathways.
Covers frontier model labs through to applied vertical AI. Money comes from Innovate UK BridgeAI, ARIA's Mathematics for Safe AI programme, and VCs like Air Street and Plural.
Funded through Made Smarter Innovation, ARIA's Smarter Robot Bodies and Robot Dexterity programmes, and the Robotics Growth Partnership.
NIHR i4i, SBRI Healthcare and the AI in Health & Care Award fund clinical software, diagnostics and digital therapeutics.
Covers devices, implantables and clinical-stage therapeutics. Grants run to £50M+ for late-stage trials through Biomedical Catalyst and Innovation Loans.
UKSA grants, ESA BIC UK incubation and the UKI2S Seed Fund all back upstream and downstream space ventures.
MOD's UK Defence Innovation (formerly DASA) funds TRL 2–6 work in autonomy, counter-UAS, AI/security and aviation. Innovate UK runs periodic dual-use programmes alongside; NSSIF backs defence-adjacent equity.
Every devolved nation runs its own equity funds and grant programmes, and England’s regional engines fill in around them: NPIF II, MEIF and the British Business Bank. Click a region to see what sits there.
A directory of UK-active venture funds, accelerators, angel networks and crowdfunding platforms, curated by stage and ticket size. Nobody pays to be listed here, and we hold no affiliate relationships.
British Patient Capital, a BBB subsidiary, and the wider British Business Bank do not write cheques to founders. They commit capital to UK venture and growth-equity managers and co-invest alongside them. Balderton, Northzone, Octopus and Plural all appear in the atlas above, and they back companies on their normal terms. What the BPC commitment changes is the size and the patience of the fund sitting behind those terms.
The Mansion House Accord (2023) and Mansion House Compact (2024–25) extend the same logic to UK pension capital: DC schemes have publicly committed a share of assets to UK private markets, routed through fund managers such as the British Growth Partnership. There is no Mansion House application to make. Founders raise from a fund that already holds Mansion House money.
What this means in practice: when a UK VC tells you its LP base includes BBB, BPC or Mansion House signatories, read it as a signal about that fund’s stability and its capacity to follow on. There is no separate channel behind it for you to apply to.
Britain’s answer to DARPA, with more than £800m over five years for science that might not work.
Advanced Research + Invention Agency. Spun out of UKRI in 2023, ARIA backs frontier research that traditional grant bodies turn down. Its programmes are problem-led and run for years across several institutions at once, funding small teams in adjacent fields who are working towards one ambitious goal.
Funding takes the form of a programme contract, which is a different instrument from a grant. Universities, startups and individuals can all hold one. Total deployable across opportunity spaces is currently £800m+ over the parliament term, with individual programmes ranging from £15M to £80M over multi-year periods.
Tickets shown are typical ranges. Funds do go outside them. Crowdfunding rounds are net of platform fees, usually around 7%. ARIA programme budgets follow aria.org.uk opportunity-space announcements; total deployment depends on contract awards.
A maintained shortlist of schemes that are open right now. You can sort by amount or deadline and filter by type. The full database goes out in the newsletter.
| Scheme | Type | Amount | Stage | Deadline ↑ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Techstars London Techstars | ACCEL | $120K · 6% equity | preseed · seed | 01 Sep 2026 |
ARIA Programme Contract ARIA | GRANT | £500K–£15M | seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Made Smarter Innovation Innovate UK | GRANT | £200K–£10M | seed · seriesa | Rolling |
SBRI Healthcare NHS England | GRANT | Up to £1M | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
UK Space Agency Grants UKSA | GRANT | £100K–£5M | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Catapult Network Project Catapult Network | GRANT | £10K–£500K | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Knowledge Transfer Partnership Innovate UK | GRANT | £40K–£140K/yr | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
ICURe Programme UKRI / SETsquared | GRANT | £35K + support | idea | Rolling |
Royal Academy Eng. Fellowship Royal Academy | GRANT | £75K stipend | idea · preseed | Annual |
SEIS Round HMRC scheme | EQUITY | Up to £250K | preseed · seed | Evergreen |
EIS Round HMRC scheme | EQUITY | Up to £12M | seed · seriesa | Evergreen |
VCT Investment Various managers | EQUITY | Up to £5M/yr | seed · seriesa | Evergreen |
R&D Tax Credit (Merged) HMRC | TAX | ~16.2% effective | preseed · seed · seriesa | Evergreen |
R&D ERIS (R&D-intensive loss) HMRC | TAX | ~27% effective | preseed · seed · seriesa | Evergreen |
Start Up Loans (BBB) British Business Bank | LOAN | Up to £25K @ 6% | idea · preseed | Rolling |
British Patient Capital British Business Bank | EQUITY | £5M–£50M | seriesa | Via VC partners |
Future Fund: Breakthrough British Business Bank | EQUITY | £5M–£20M | seriesa | Paused |
UKI2S Seed Fund Future Planet Capital | EQUITY | £500K–£3M | preseed · seed | Rolling |
NPIF II (North England) British Business Bank | EQUITY | £25K–£2M | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Antler London Antler | ACCEL | £85K · 8% equity | idea · preseed | Rolling |
Founders Factory Founders Factory | ACCEL | £30K–£250K | preseed · seed | Rolling |
LocalGlobe / Phoenix Court LocalGlobe | EQUITY | £150K–£2M | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Hoxton Ventures Hoxton Ventures | EQUITY | £500K–£3M | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Seedcamp Seedcamp | EQUITY | £100K–£500K | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Octopus Ventures Octopus Ventures | EQUITY | £1M–£10M | seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Plural Platform Plural | EQUITY | €1M–€10M | seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Air Street Capital Air Street Capital | EQUITY | £150K–£1M | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Concept Ventures Concept Ventures | EQUITY | £200K–£1M | preseed | Rolling |
Ada Ventures Ada Ventures | EQUITY | £100K–£800K | preseed | Rolling |
Index Ventures Index Ventures | EQUITY | £3M–£50M | seriesa | Rolling |
Atomico Atomico | EQUITY | £5M–£25M | seriesa | Rolling |
Balderton Capital Balderton Capital | EQUITY | £1M–£20M | seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Accel London Accel | EQUITY | £3M–£30M | seriesa | Rolling |
UKBAA Angel Network UKBAA | EQUITY | £25K–£500K | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Cambridge Angels Cambridge Angels | EQUITY | £50K–£1M | preseed · seed | Rolling |
Crowdcube Crowdcube | EQUITY | £150K–£5M+ | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Republic Europe (Seedrs) Republic | EQUITY | £150K–£10M | preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
ARIA Opportunity Seeds ARIA | GRANT | Up to £500K | idea · preseed · seed | Rolling |
UK Defence Innovation Open Call MOD / UKDI (formerly DASA) | GRANT | £50K–£400K | idea · preseed · seed · seriesa | Rolling |
Estimate what HMRC’s merged scheme returns on qualifying expenditure. Loss-making R&D-intensive SMEs can claim under ERIS for a higher effective rate.
Use qualifying R&D expenditure (staff costs, software, subcontractor costs at 65%, consumables, etc.). Round figures are fine for a back-of-envelope.
Indicative only. Always confirm with a qualified R&D tax adviser. Rates per HMRC rules from 1 April 2024.
The questions people ask before they apply. None of this is financial advice.
One email a month, covering newly-opened schemes, changes to the ones already running, and the deadlines worth knowing about. Written for founders.