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.

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.”

A Smart Data ecosystem that is interoperable across sectors could 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.

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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.

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, visit smartdata.challenges.org.