About Round One
Polaron is the Round 1 grand prize winner!
The first Manchester Prize ran from November 2023 to March 2025, and awarded £2 million in two phases.
In its first year, the Manchester Prize awarded innovators with the most innovative and impactful AI solution which demonstrates social benefit by overcoming challenges in the fields of energy, environment and infrastructure.
10 of the most promising solutions were each awarded £100,000 grants and additional non-financial support. The finalists recently completed a nine-month development phase and the winner of the £1 million grand prize for the first Manchester Prize was announced on 19th March 2025.
View the video before to meet the 10 finalist teams, and see the winner announcement:
Round 1 winners: Polaron
We are pleased to announce the winning team is Polaron, an artificial intelligence technology that dramatically accelerates the development of new advanced materials from decades to just a day. Polaron has won the £1 million inaugural Manchester Prize.
Manchester Prize has brought more credibility to our work, particularly in advancing our talks and building our industry connections. This has been particularly useful in establishing our ongoing partnership with Network Rail. Furthermore, the prize has allowed us to be more visible with probably the hardest markets to get into in the UK, so even if we don’t win the 1 million pound grand prize, we are in a much stronger place to go forward and go further for investment
The Prize Phases
The entry phase, opened on 30 November 2023, teams developed their ideas and proposals, worked towards submitting their entry by the final deadline of 1 February 2024. Phase 1 culminated with ten entrants being selected as finalists, and each receiving an award of £100,000 in April 2024.
The finalist phase, which began in May 2024, and ended in January 2025 challenged the teams to develop their ideas into a working prototype. In addition to their £100,000 grant, finalists received non-financial support in the form of a package of up to £90,000 of compute, profile-building, IP and value proposition training. In January 2025, teams demonstrated their prototype and made a final submission to be considered for the grand prize.