Black Founders Programme
The Black Founders Programme is an accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black-founded companies creating innovative products and services...
Who we are
Our ambition
Digital Catapult accelerates the application of deep tech to realise a better future for the UK
We accelerate the practical application of deep technology to drive innovation, enhance competitiveness, and create a more prosperous future for the UK. By bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world deployment, we empower businesses, industries, and society to harness the full potential of emerging technologies.
Our team work at the forefront of deep tech, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to advanced networks and immersive experiences. Through collaboration with startups, scaleups, and established enterprises, we help businesses de-risk innovation, scale faster, and remain globally competitive in an increasingly digital world.
Our approach is hands-on and impact-driven. We provide access to state-of-the-art facilities, expert knowledge and funding opportunities, ensuring that breakthrough technologies translate into tangible economic and social benefits. By fostering a thriving ecosystem of innovators, investors, and policymakers, we shape the UK’s digital future and unlock new opportunities across industries.
With a focus on sustainability, inclusivity, and economic resilience, Digital Catapult is committed to transforming the UK into a leader in deep tech adoption. Together, we are building a smarter, more connected, and future-ready nation.
Enabling deep tech companies to scale
Accelerating early-stage deep tech investment and enabling access to advanced facilities, research and development capabilities, and innovation programmes to help businesses grow and to take the products, services and experiences of the future to market. Our work helps maintain the UK’s position as a global competitor in deep tech, in addition to increasing investor knowledge about advanced technologies and confidence to invest in entrepreneurs and startups, which are helping create new products and services that address imbalances between supply and demand.
We offer tailored activities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to support their growth journeys:
- Business growth accelerators
- Investment readiness support
- Accelerating industry partnerships
- Access to R&D capabilities
- Taking products to commercialisation
Improving UK industrial supply chain resilience
Increasing supply chain resilience to grow inward investment, creating new supply chain ecosystems that deliver export growth, and supporting the green transition of supply chains in critical sectors.
Our work in this area includes international initiatives to transform global import and export processes and industry-led programmes to address critical minerals shortages and build a sustainable circular economy for waste textiles.
By creating these new supply chain ecosystems, we’re helping to forge deeper and closer partnerships between traditional industries and disruptive startups and SMEs.
- Creating new UK-based supply chain ecosystems that deliver export growth;
- Inward investment into the UK supply chain;
- Innovative new digital supply chain businesses launched and scaled.
Driving industrial decarbonisation
Supporting the removal of 10,000,000 tCO2 e from industry by 2030 to help reach the UK’s net zero commitments by demonstrating leadership in sustainability through deep tech innovation.
Deep tech can play an important role in decarbonisation across UK industry. We create products, services and proofs-of-concept such as the Ecometer and our Green Hydrogen Certifier, to monitor, evaluate and action solutions to reduce carbon emissions in industry, as well as working with startups and large businesses to develop climate tech solutions that tackle inefficiencies and reduce waste to improve environmental performance.
- Enabling carbon visibility and awareness across industry and supply chains
- Supporting the journey to net zero through sustainable infrastructure
- Fostering a UK community of sustainable innovators
- Enabling green digital technologies
Advancing UK development and use of data driven and open future networks
Increase diversity, investment and deployment of industrial research and development for future UK communications systems, and enable more resilient, secure connectivity. Future digital connectivity is underpinned by data, networks and artificial intelligence and is essential for the adoption of deep tech.
Our work at the forefront of future networks technologies like 5G, 6G and Open RAN, coupled with our expertise in applied artificial intelligence, is supporting increased investment in industrial research and development for future communications systems, boosting open, multi-vendor, resilient and secure networks, which are key to critical national infrastructure, and creating sovereign capabilities and opportunities for growth in deep tech.
Our interventions are helping to:
- Support national security;
- Develop a community of commercial partners, adoption partners and specific industry partners; and
- Develop UK future telecoms global leadership.