RESOURCES
Where to find funded pilots right now
Database
40+ funded pilot programmes across energy, waste and heavy industry, each with a named corporate backer and a defined application window.
In a paid corporate pilot, an industrial company puts a technology into one of its own operations and pays for the test, whether that is Rio Tinto at a mine, Holcim at a plant, or EDP on the grid. The site is theirs, the conditions are theirs, and so is the standard for whether it worked. That gives a hardware or deeptech company three things: budget from a buyer rather than from a round, a reference the next investor can verify, and people inside the operation who have watched the technology run.
Every programme here is selected on the backer rather than the size of the cheque, so mentorship-only schemes and investors who fund without committing to a deployment are left out.
The current selection runs across energy and grid, industrial tech, waste and circularity, and fuels and decarbonisation, with backers including Rio Tinto, Holcim, Iberdrola, TotalEnergies, Shell, Siemens Energy, Equinor, BHP, and Innovate UK. Each entry records the programme, what is actually on offer (a paid pilot, a grant, an investment, or a supplier contract), the minimum technology readiness level, the deployment geography, and the window to apply. Nineteen take applications at any time. Verified in August 2026.
A funded pilot is the way into the buyer's own operation, and it is worth winning on that alone. The vendor list sits with the production side, and getting onto it is your next conversation.
What to do with a pilot once it is running is covered by the Sales Control System, also in Resources.