Cash grants for AI are limited — but free support is surprisingly abundant. Knowing where to find it saves money and avoids mistakes. Here’s the 2026 guide for UK businesses, cited to official sources. (dgm implements osFoundry as an independent partner.)

Free advisory support

  • Innovate UK Business Growth (formerly EDGE) — free one-to-one support from innovation and growth specialists for ambitious, innovation-focused SMEs, covering funding, R&D capacity, business models and market access.
  • Growth Hubs and the Business Growth Service (business.gov.uk) — free local gateways to advice and signposting toward funding and programmes.

Free guidance and frameworks

  • BridgeAI — beyond its funding competitions, it offers a free AI Adoption Framework, guidance and connections for businesses in its target sectors.

Free training

  • AI Skills Boost — over 1 million free AI courses delivered, building workforce AI literacy.
  • Hartree Centre — free self-paced courses on embedding AI (e.g. predictive maintenance, intelligent automation).

What free support can and can’t do

Free support is excellent for direction and de-risking: choosing the right funding route, lifting baseline skills, and avoiding common adoption mistakes. What it can’t do is build and integrate the solution for you — that’s a separate step. So use free advice to decide what to do, then resource the doing.

Where osFoundry and dgm fit

dgm picks up where free advice leaves off — scoping and implementing the actual AI project once you’ve chosen a direction. We build on osFoundry: usage-priced, bring-your-own-key, self-hostable in your own cloud or an EU region for UK data-sensitive work (osFoundry publishes US/EU/JP regions, not a UK one). Because it’s source-available with documented SDKs, the free skills your team gains transfer directly to running it.

dgm is an independent integration partner with zero integrations so far. Free support comes from the bodies above. To turn free advice into a working AI project, book a consultation with dgm. General information; confirm current support with each provider.