Frequently Asked Questions

The Manchester Prize is an initiative of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) on behalf of HM Government. 

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) focuses on accelerating innovation, investment and productivity through world-class science and improving people’s lives by maxmising the potential of science and technology.

Our responsibilities include:

• positioning the UK at the forefront of global scientific and technological advancement
• driving innovations that change lives and sustain economic growth
• delivering talent programmes, physical and digital infrastructure and regulation to support our economy, security and public services
• R&D funding

The Second Manchester Prize is being delivered by Challenge Works – a Nesta enterprise.

Challenge Works is a global leader in the design and delivery of open innovation challenges that mobilise diverse, innovative thinkers to solve pressing problems and unlock change. Founded by Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation for social good, we are a social enterprise that has delivered 93 challenges to date and distributed more than £258 million to winning innovators.

The Manchester Prize is a multi-million pound, multi-year challenge prize, launched in 2023 and funded by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology to reward UK-led breakthroughs in artificial intelligence for public good.

The second Manchester Prize is a two-million-pound prize that will build on UK expertise and support the development of ten innovative and impactful AI solutions, each with the potential to enable the UK to quickly reach or operate a net zero energy system.

The application of AI has the capacity to make us more productive in our jobs, improve the delivery of public services, make our national infrastructure work better, and support the transition to a net zero economy.

The climate and nature crisis is one of the greatest long-term challenges we face in the UK and around the world. The UK has set a world-leading target to decarbonise the electricity grid to deliver green power by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. Achieving these twin goals will boost the UK’s energy independence, protect billpayers, support good, well-paid jobs across the country and combat the climate and nature crisis. 

To make this possible, the UK must rapidly increase the rollout of homegrown, clean energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. This year, the Manchester Prize is incentivising the development and deployment of AI in this space to support the UK in realising its mission to be a clean energy superpower.

Challenge prizes support open innovation with a level playing field for established and previously untested innovators alike, enabling the most promising ideas to progress with funding and expert capacity building support.

The Second Manchester Prize runs from November 2024 to March 2026 and will award a total of £2 million across two phases.

The second Manchester prize money will be awarded in two phases.

Up to ten teams will be selected as finalists in April 2025, and receive £100,000 each. 

One team will be awarded the grand prize in March 2026, and receive £1,000,000. 

All entries should be made through the online entry form.

Submissions open at 9am GMT on 19th November 2024.

Submissions close at 12pm GMT on 17th January 2025.

The entry forms should be submitted in English.

Entries must come from incorporated organisations (e.g. private limited companies, non-profits, charities, universities, research and technology organisations). 

We will not accept applications from individuals.

See here for guidance on how to incorporate. Incorporation costs around £50 with straightforward applications normally processed within 24 hours, please check the site to confirm your individual needs.

Please check the eligibility criteria on the website to make sure that you are eligible to apply.

The second Manchester Prize is a multi-million-pound launchpad for innovators with bold AI solutions for a clean energy economy.

Solutions should demonstrate the use of AI that accelerates the UK’s adoption of clean energy technologies at scale; enables efficient or low-cost operations of clean energy systems; and/or significantly reduces energy demand or optimises energy usage.

The Manchester Prize is encouraging teams of innovators, academics, scientists, engineers, start-ups and entrepreneurs to submit their solutions. We think good ideas come from everywhere so please do surprise us!

For your team to be eligible to enter the Manchester Prize, you must meet these requirements:

You can find them on the website here.

We aren’t applying a specific definition of AI, but our judges will be looking for innovative advances in the field, and we’re particularly interested in solutions that demonstrate advances in technical capabilities such as generalisation, uncertainty quantification, interpretability, data-efficient AI and physics-based AI. 

Innovative and technically groundbreaking uses of AI refer to novel technical approaches, solutions to a problem in the underlying AI and/or an application of your AI solution to solve a problem much better than it can currently be solved. Innovation in the business model, marketing or service design is not considered.

In the second Manchester Prize, we’re interested in AI solutions for a clean energy economy. Solutions should demonstrate use of AI that accelerates the UK’s adoption of clean energy technologies at scale; enable efficient or low-cost operations of clean energy systems; and/or significantly reduce energy demand or optimise energy usage.

Example solutions could take the form of:

1. Predicting supply and demand to support smart load management in the grid, allowing for better integration of renewables while minimising transmission constraints.
2. Optimising energy consumption in commercial spaces, for example, through (semi-)autonomous control of data centres.
3. Maximising renewable energy capture and storage, by leveraging AI to discover new materials and design superior solar panels and wind turbines.
4. Ensuring a stable and resilient energy supply, and easing grid stress, by using AI to optimise and coordinate local energy assets, such as heat pumps and batteries.
5. Accelerating energy infrastructure projects while minimising environmental and societal impact through AI solutions that support feasibility studies or site plan development.
6. Empowering people in their energy transition with solutions that provide AI-powered insights, and tailored interventions and support.

There is no minimum level of development to enter the Prize. The prize will not fund established solutions that are already available in the market but will consider applications of solutions already in the market where this solution is applied to a new use case.

The end of the Manchester Prize is January 2026. Entrants will be expected to have at minimum a working prototype (approximately TRL 6) that can be demonstrated by this point. Finalists who enter to win the grand prize will be asked to quantify and be judged on, the potential impact of their solution in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions saved by 2030, and in the longer term.

The end of the Manchester Prize is January 2026. Entrants will be expected to have at minimum a working prototype (approximately TRL 6) that can be demonstrated by this point. Finalists who enter to win the grand prize will be asked to quantify and be judged on, the potential impact of their solution in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions saved by 2030, and in the longer term.

You are welcome to enter with solutions with a developed proof of concept with scope for further development and refinement. Teams can also take an existing solution that’s in the market for one use case, and significantly adapt it to apply to another.

Solutions that are already mature technologies that are deployed in the market are unlikely to meet the assessment criteria.

Up to ten finalists will be picked at the end of the entry phase, and one winner of the grand prize will be picked at the end of the finalist phase. 

At both points, the successful teams will be selected based on five judging criteria. These are equally weighted.

• Innovation: Teams should demonstrate how their solution is an innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), compared to what is the current state of the art. This may be innovation in the underlying AI, or in a novel application of an existing AI approach, or both (innovation in the business model, marketing or service design is not taken into account).

• Impact: Teams should explain how their solution will deliver on at least one of the following:

• accelerate the UK’s transition to clean energy technologies at scale

• enable efficient or low-cost operations of clean energy systems

• significantly reduce energy demand, or optimise energy usage

Teams should indicate the speed and scale at which they expect this impact to be achieved, expected impacts by 2030, and anticipated longer-term impacts. Teams are asked to quantify this impact in expected greenhouse gas emissions saved.

• • Feasibility: The team should show how their scientific and technical approach is appropriate and how the team has the capacity to deliver a working prototype by January 2026.

• Long-term viability: Teams should articulate why there is a credible path to adoption (commercial or non-commercial) for their solution, and what their plan is to pursue it.

• Safety, ethics and sustainability: The team should show they are taking action to showcase best practice in developing and deploying safe and ethical AI, and how they are assessing and mitigating risks to environmental sustainability posed by their solution.

After the deadline at 12pm (GMT) on 17 January 2025, an eligibility screen will be conducted to ensure entries all meet the eligibility criteria. All eligible entries will be assessed against the judging criteria by suitably qualified assessors. 

A shortlist of the best entries in line with the judging criteria will then be provided to the independent judging panel, who will make recommendations for which entries should receive funding and advance through to the finalist phase.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will make the final decision based on the judges’ recommendations. 

The finalist phase, which begins in April 2025, sees the ten selected teams developing their ideas to best meet the aims as set out in the challenge statement and judging criteria. In addition to a £100,000 grant, teams will receive a range of non-financial support including up to  £60,000 of compute credits to develop their solutions within the development phase.

In January 2026, finalist teams will make a final submission to be considered for the grand prize which demonstrates their suitability to win. In March 2026, the best team as decided by a team of expert judges and in line with the judging criteria will be awarded the grand prize of £1 million.

The entry phase opens on 19 November 2024, teams develop their proposals, working towards submitting their entry by the final deadline of 17 January 2025 at 12pm (GMT). The entry phase culminates with an assessment and judging process with up to ten entrant teams being selected as finalists, and each receiving an award of £100,000 in April 2025. 

Finalists will be selected at the end of the entry phase based on the judging criteria.

Only teams selected as finalists at the end of the entry phase will be eligible to compete in the finalist phase.

Teams retain all intellectual property (IP) in solutions they develop in competing for the Manchester Prize.

If you still have queries, contact the team on info@manchesterprize.org.