Smart Data Challenge Prize launches to reward SMEs
Source: gov.uk (2025-01-15)

£600,000 and additional support available to winners with bold Smart Data solutions

- Innovators from across industry invited to enter unique Smart Data solutions to solve real problems faced by people and businesses by empowering them in new ways.
- The prize will award up to £600,000 and additional support to the boldest Smart Data solutions.
- Finalists will gain exclusive access to a new Smart Data Sandbox to test and develop their ideas into working prototypes.
The Department for Business & Trade, Challenge Works, the Open Data Institute and Smart Data Foundry are calling on innovators to enter the new Smart Data Challenge Prize.

The prize will award up to £600,000 to accelerate the most innovative apps and technologies to empower consumers and SMEs through new Smart Data enabled services that will increase competition and grow the economy.

Successful teams will gain exclusive access to the new Smart Data Sandbox, built especially for the prize, to test and develop their technologies. The Smart Data Sandbox brings together synthetic data on people and businesses across 11 broad data domains - including banking, insurance, investing, property, energy, and retail - each encompassing multiple datasets.

The challenge prize looks to identify Smart Data use cases that utilise multiple datasets from sectors across the economy, and demonstrate lasting benefits for people and businesses

The prize is calling on individuals, innovators, entrepreneurs, academia and civil society to enter for the chance to prototype ambitious solutions that would harness Smart Data across different sectors of the economy.

Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets, Justin Madders MP, said:

“Smart Data has the potential to supercharge a wave of innovative start-ups right across the country. As we’ve seen with Open Banking which has raised over £2 billion of private funding, I hope other sectors can take advantage of the competition to provide real change for consumers and boost economic growth right across the nation.”

As a pioneer of Open Banking, the UK led the world in using Smart Data to improve services for consumers and small businesses, while creating the regulatory framework for British fintech start-ups to flourish.

Following this success, there is a huge opportunity to drive momentum towards a Smart Data ecosystem that promotes economic growth, focusing on new sectors like finance, energy, and others, to drive positive change that works for all consumers.

The Smart Data Challenge Prize is the next step in this journey focused on prototyping the first working cross-sector applications (beyond banking) of Smart Data in a sandbox environment.

Holly Jamieson, Executive Director, Challenge Works said:

“The Smart Data Challenge Prize is an open innovation competition – it is calling on diverse innovators from across industry, academia and civil society to enter their Smart Data solutions that will make people’s lives better and easier. Challenge prizes have a proven track-record of creating opportunities for innovative entrants, start-ups and entrepreneurs because they support the best ideas no matter their origin.”

Louise Burke, CEO, the Open Data Institute said:

“The biggest obstacle facing Smart Data innovators right now is the lack of real-world Smart Data available to them. To experiment, iterate and scale proofs of concept, innovators need access to high-quality, robust and secure data to demonstrate how their ideas will create lasting benefits for people and businesses. The Smart Data Sandbox will bring together data on people and businesses across 11 broad data domains. It will enable innovators to develop their ideas into prototype solutions to demonstrate the viability and benefits of Smart Data in different sectors.”

The Smart Data Challenge Prize builds on the momentum of the Smart Data Discovery Challenge (https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsmartdata.challenges.org%2Fabout-the-smart-data-discovery-challenge%2F&data=05%7C02%7CJordan.Bhatt%40businessandtrade.gov.uk%7Cbec809648c444315f65a08dd31914a22%7C8fa217ec33aa46fbad96dfe68006bb86%7C0%7C0%7C638721222254980689%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=XaT6LU7PHvSXKMzWCgfi8FFUP0VJ1t7Aq%2FbXOBORLw0%3D&reserved=0) which named winners in March 2024. It called on start-ups and innovative businesses to share their visions for what could be possible in a Smart Data economy.

Winners of this smaller-scale challenge included Rodeo (https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gorodeo.app%2F&data=05%7C02%7CJordan.Bhatt%40businessandtrade.gov.uk%7Cbec809648c444315f65a08dd31914a22%7C8fa217ec33aa46fbad96dfe68006bb86%7C0%7C0%7C638721222255007016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=boCRfqfnFSvrUb3NM5d46BOf%2FLpMpQ2st4SRgQtIygk%3D&reserved=0), an app to help gig workers understand their variable pay to plan their finances and Mealia (https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mealia.co.uk%2F&data=05%7C02%7CJordan.Bhatt%40businessandtrade.gov.uk%7Cbec809648c444315f65a08dd31914a22%7C8fa217ec33aa46fbad96dfe68006bb86%7C0%7C0%7C638721222255025345%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=HV5hAzICtb8Y2yujeQXmMA2jWabz%2F%2BAtFxqCfBPSkkY%3D&reserved=0), an app that integrates supermarket data to recommend cost savings and healthier eating.

A Smart Data ecosystem that is interoperable across sectors will unlock a wealth of opportunity to solve problems facing people and SMEs, in ways that haven’t been possible before. The Smart Data Challenge Prize is particularly keen to encourage ideas across financial services, energy, retail, transport and home buying.

Solutions could help address many different challenges including the cost of living, the transition to clean power and Net Zero, improving access to services, creating a level playing field for SMEs and supporting vulnerable customers.

In May 2025, 10 finalists will be supported with seed funding of up to £50,000, expert mentoring and access to a bespoke Smart Data Sandbox to test and develop their ideas into working prototypes. In Autumn 2025, an overall winner with the most promising Smart Data solution will be awarded £50,000. There will be two runner-up prizes of £25,000.

Teams will use the data in the sandbox to ensure their solutions are designed to work across multiple sectors, and with available data. This will help move the UK towards the point where the types of solutions being developed through the prize work with real-world Smart Data when it becomes available, and for the Smart Data that becomes available to be interoperable between different sectors.

Through the prize, the government will gain insight into a range of in-depth, tested use cases across a variety of sectors, providing a clear picture of the potential barriers to development, and exactly what data would need to be unlocked to bring the most innovative ideas in the Smart Data space to life in the long term.

Entries to the Smart Data Challenge Prize must be UK-led. The entry window opens today and closes on 14 March 2025 at 23:59. To find out more about Smart Data visit smartdata.challenges.org (https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsmartdata.challenges.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7CJordan.Bhatt%40businessandtrade.gov.uk%7Cbec809648c444315f65a08dd31914a22%7C8fa217ec33aa46fbad96dfe68006bb86%7C0%7C0%7C638721222255040654%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=AEmMOPFcGV2wU5cgFkDJMo%2BByqzZ3JUcPoiDNggktGs%3D&reserved=0).