SH&P Pitch & Protect® 2026: Meet Our Three Winners
We had amazing response to this year’s SH&P Pitch & Protect®. Faced with an exceptionally strong field of applicants, we decided one winner was not enough and awarded £23,000 in IP funding to three deserving businesses.
And so, after more than 200 applications and a final round of online confidential pitches from some of the UK’s most exciting startup and early-stage innovative businesses, SH&P Pitch & Protect® 2026 has officially ended.
We are delighted to announce Last Appliances as our 2026 winner, securing the first-place £10,000 intellectual property funding package.
However, the standard of applications and pitches this year was so high that we decided to increase our original funding commitment and create two additional awards with Northern Light Microscopy taking second place, receiving £8,000 in IP funding, while CGEN Engineering took third place and will receive £5,000 in IP funding.
This takes SH&P’s total funding awarded through Pitch & Protect® 2026 to £23,000.
Supporting UK innovation
Pitch & Protect® was created by SH&P to help ambitious startups and early-stage technology businesses access the intellectual property advice and protection needed to support their growth.
For young companies, developing innovative technology is only part of the challenge. Understanding what can be protected and how patents, trade marks and other IP rights support future commercial plans can be equally important. Pitch & Protect® helps address this by giving UK innovators the opportunity to secure funded intellectual property support from SH&P.
More than 200 applications
The response to Pitch & Protect® 2026 exceeded our expectations, with more than 200 applications from early stage innovative businesses across the UK. Following an extensive review process, 23 applicants were invited to pitch their businesses and innovations directly to our team.
Choosing a winner was far from straightforward. The strength of the final 23 demonstrated the depth and quality of innovation taking place across the UK startup community which was great to see. We therefore decided that one winner simply wasn’t enough and increased our original £10,000 commitment to £23,000 across three funding awards.
Meet our Pitch & Protect® 2026 winners
🥇 1st Place – Last Appliances | £10,000
Developing repairable and upgradeable small kitchen appliances designed to replace disposable products and remain in use for years, Last Appliances has been named the overall winner of Pitch & Protect® 2026 and will receive £10,000 of funded intellectual property services from SH&P to help protect its innovations and brand as the business develops.
🥈 2nd Place – Northern Light Microscopy | £8,000
Producing accessible advanced microscopy hardware and software to support life-science research, biotechnology and drug discovery, Northern Light Microscopy receives our newly created £8,000 second-place IP funding package, recognising the quality of its technology, progress and future potential.
🥉 3rd Place – CGEN Engineering | £5,000
Engineering modular, scalable generator technology for renewable energy applications including wind, tidal, wave and hydro power, CGEN Engineering takes third place and receives £5,000 of IP funding, supporting the company as it continues to develop and commercialise its next-generation generator technology.
So, that will be a sum total of £23,000 invested by SH&P in UK innovation and our huge congratulations to Last Appliances, Northern Light Microscopy and CGEN Engineering. We are delighted to be supporting all three businesses with their intellectual property needs as they move into the next phases of their development.
We would also like to thank every founder and company that applied for Pitch & Protect® 2026. Receiving more than 200 applications gave us the opportunity to see first-hand the quality of technology, entrepreneurship and innovation being developed by early-stage businesses across the UK.
Ultimately, the strength of those applications led SH&P to more than double our original funding commitment, with £23,000 of IP funding now being awarded to our three winners.
Congratulations again to our 2026 winners. We can’t wait to see what comes next!
If you missed out this time then don’t despair! You can register your interest below for next year’s Pitch & Protect®. Once registered, we will notify you as soon as applications are open again.
Register your interest for Pitch & Protect® 2027 by using the button below.
