Guidance

Cloud access call

Updated 17 July 2026

Summary

UK based Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are invited to submit applications for up to £400,000 of cloud compute per project to support in the delivery of compute intensive AI R&D activity.

Successful applicants will receive cloud credits that can be used with one or more approved cloud service providers. During the application process applicants will be asked to indicate their preferred cloud service provider and any specific technical requirements. Further information on the available providers and supported services will be shared with successful applicants during onboarding.

Applications will open on 17 July and close at 4pm on 24 July 2026.

Project onboarding activity is expected to take place in August 2026.

How to apply

To apply for this call, please fill out the AIRR Hartree Cloud Pilot application form via the AIRR Portal. Find guidance on how to register for an AIRR Portal account.

The application consists of the following components:

• AIRRPortal online form, with three sections (not scored by assessors)
  • Project details (which includes the ‘Upload supporting documentation’ option, where the attachment requested below is to be uploaded)
  • Resource requests (please leave this blank)
  • Project team (you only need to include the project lead)
• Main application form to be uploaded, template available on the AIRRPortal call details page

The application form has 5 sections, and you are required to populate each section. All questions are mandatory.

Questions are a blend of multiple choice and free text. Where questions are free text, a word limit will be provided. While the maximum word limit is fixed, when evaluating your responses we value brevity, and use of the full word limit is not a necessity.

Hyperlinks referencing further information may be included to inform more detailed understanding post-selection but will be disregarded during the assessment of applications.

Before submitting, it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to ensure that:

• the information provided is accurate, and
• the proposal meets the eligibility and scope criteria for the chosen access route.

Who can apply

To apply, your organisation must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Your organisation must be a UK registered business, with a Companies House registration number.
• Your organisation must meet the definition of a small and medium-sized enterprise.

Subsidy Control

All  AIRR access routes provide awards in line with the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Further information about the Subsidy requirements can be found within the Subsidy Control Act 2022 (legislation.gov.uk).

For the purposes of this application DSIT intends to use the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Subsidy Route. Applying organisations should familiarise themselves with the Research, Development and Innovation streamlined route guidance.

Security

A condition of access to the service is that each user acknowledges and abides by the System Operating Procedures. Failure to abide by the System Operating Procedures opens users to civil and criminal liabilities up to and including imprisonment.

Further details will be provided to successful applicants.

Evaluation Criteria for Applications

All applications will be evaluated fairly and in line with the criteria set out below. Where answers are unclear or confusing, evaluators have been instructed to mark at the lowest level commensurate with clear commitments/ answers.

The evaluation will comprise three phases:

• Phase one: Mandatory eligibility requirements; a failure of any of these will result in the application being rejected.
• Phase two: Confirmation that the market sector and economic data questions have been filled out completely. We will use this for auditing and compute management purposes.
• Phase three: We will then assess and score your whole application against four categories:
  • National benefit: How does your project benefit the UK’s strategic position?
  • Impact: Could this enable a meaningful AI R&D breakthrough i.e. advance knowledge or create new research directions?
  • Additionality: What difference would AIRR support make?
  • Deliverability: Is your project mature enough to use AIRR compute effectively? Does your team have the capacity and/ or ability to deliver the project safely and realise the benefits?

Projects will be selected according to the final application scores, ensuring projects span a variety of sectors, organisation types, sizes and project intention.

Our aim is to select around 20 projects of up to £400k each, based on final scores.

Excessive demand

In the event that demand significantly increases capacity, we will filter applications based on the National Benefit and Deliverability categories. Following this, applicants will be entered into a ballot to ensure the fairest allocation of the 20 projects. Any eligible applicants that are unsuccessful in the ballot will be placed on a reserve list. These applicants may be offered access to cloud compute should future rounds be announced.

All applicants will be noted of their eligibility and outcome. We encourage all applicants to continue to check for programme updates, as further rounds may be launched and additional places may become available.

Allocating resources

Once applications have been evaluated, applicants will be notified of the outcome of the application by DSIT. We are unable to provide applicant-specific feedback.

Once successful applicants are notified, onboarding of projects and allocation of cloud credits will be carried out by UKRI Hartree.

UKRI Hartree will also be providing dedicated RSE (Research Software Engineering) support to projects that require it. The level of RSE support projects require will be determined during the onboarding process.

Monitoring and Evaluation

As a pilot, the AIRR Cloud Compute Offer gives applicants an opportunity to help shape the future of public compute provision, while enabling DSIT to understand its benefits and improve future delivery.

Both successful and unsuccessful applicants will be expected to participate in evaluation activities throughout the pilot. We aim to ensure that activities are proportionate, while ensuring we gather sufficient evidence to understand future delivery. Applicants will be invited to surveys and interviews to:

• provide information on project progress, outputs and outcomes;
• provide feedback on their experience of accessing and using cloud compute resources and associated support; and
• supply information required to assess the impact and value of the programme.

DSIT will be working with third party evaluation partners acting on DSIT’s behalf. All information will be aggregated and anonymised before shared with DSIT, otherwise explicit permission will be sought. Information collected will only be used for monitoring and evaluation purposes in accordance with applicable data protection requirements, in accordance with the privacy notice for this offer. Applicants may withdraw from the evaluation at any point.

Applicants should ensure they have sufficient capacity and authority within their organisation to participate in these activities if their application is successful.

If you require further information or wish to withdraw from the evaluation, please contact us at: compute@dsit.gov.uk.