# A proposed photonics grant. A withdrawn project.

Research Fund Flows · Edition 02 (2.0) · 12 September 2026

**Selected project:** Innovate UK 133181; application 96271-565130; competition
1703_EE_R2_12M. **Technology:** semiconductor lasers for fibre-optic telecoms.
**Currency:** GBP. **Cutoff:** public receipts captured 12 September 2026,
16:04–16:05 UTC. This is a bounded case, not a census of awards or a misconduct finding.

## Finding

The checked records do **not establish a paid grant** to The Centre for Integrated
Photonics Limited (CIP) under project 133181. They establish a conditional 2017
selection with a £12,530 proposed grant, followed by a later official workbook
status of **Withdrawn**. CIP’s reported actual-spend-to-date field is £0, while
its award-offered cell is absent/blank. Those are different observations. [T01] [T02]

Companies House separately registers Huawei Technologies (UK) Co., Ltd. as
controlling at least 75% of CIP’s shares and voting rights. That ownership arrow
runs from Huawei UK to CIP; it carries no grant money upstream. [T03]

## 1. Conditional selection, not a payment

The competition-results PDF for the funders panel of 25 July 2017 lists
“Telecoms-wavelength GaAs-based VCSELs with GaSb quantum rings (QRVCSELs).”
Its applicant-described purpose is assessing semiconductor lasers suitable for
telecommunications wavelengths. On printed/PDF page 21, CIP’s proposed project
costs are £20,883 and proposed project grant £12,530. The qualification above
the table makes successful assessment subject to an offer and conditions.
The panel date is not an executed-award or payment date. [T01]

The September 2026 workbook links that competition and title to project 133181.
Sheet1 rows 30775–30778 list CST Global Ltd, IQE PLC, Lancaster University and CIP.
All four have project status Withdrawn and a literal zero in actual spend to date;
none supplies award-offered, total-cost or project-start/end values. [T02]

The workbook landing page was updated 3 September 2026; the file name embeds
20260902. These publication/file dates are not the date on which the project was
withdrawn. No withdrawal date, reason, executed grant agreement, cancellation
instrument or bank transaction ledger was obtained. “Withdrawn” is a reported
project status, not an invented account of a cancelled signed grant. [T02] [T07]

## 2. The missed row: Photoncis, company 04905488

An earlier exact-name feasibility lookup found no company match. The targeted
follow-up located the row by acronym, competition, project and company number:

| Excel cell, Sheet1 | Source field | Original value |
| --- | --- | --- |
| F30778 | Project Number | 133181 |
| K30778 | Participant Name | The Centre for Integrated Photoncis Limited |
| M30778 | CRN | 04905488 |
| N30778 / O30778 | Project Start / End Date | absent/blank |
| P30778 | Award Offered (£) | absent/blank |
| Q30778 | Total Costs (£) | absent/blank |
| R30778 | Actual Spend to Date (£) | 0 |
| S30778 | Participant Withdrawn From Project | Active |
| T30778 | Project Status | Withdrawn |

The misspelling Photoncis is retained. Company 04905488 matches Companies House’s
legal-name record for The Centre for Integrated Photonics Limited. The number,
competition code and project title support the identity join. The PDF alone does
not supply a company number. [T01] [T02] [T05]

The apparently discordant Active and Withdrawn values belong to separate columns.
We preserve both rather than interpreting the participant field as a live grant.
Null is not zero: the offer is blank, while reported spend is literally zero.
That source-specific zero is not a certificate of no payments across all projects.
The earlier nonmatch is superseded by this identifier-matched finding, not erased
as though a complete negative conclusion had previously been established.

## 3. Separate corporate control, with a stopping point

Companies House’s CIP PSC record names Huawei Technologies (UK) Co., Ltd. as the
registered controlling company, with at least 75% of shares and voting rights,
notified 6 April 2016. The parent number appears as 4295981 and resolves with its
leading zero to company 04295981. [T03]

The notification date is not an acquisition date. The active display at our
cutoff is not independent proof of every intervening day’s ownership. Companies
House cautions that it does not check the accuracy of filed information. We make
the narrower registered-control claim, not an independently audited ultimate-owner
determination.

The parent’s PSC page has an active no-registrable-person/relevant-legal-entity
statement, notified 28 September 2016. This is a statement under the register’s
reporting framework, not proof the company has no owners. The bounded source set
does not complete the ultimate-owner chain. [T04]

No PRC-state ownership, PLA relationship or CCP-governance edge is established by
this dossier. No grant-directed party instruction, military use or misconduct is
inferred. Those are distinct claims requiring their own sources and relevance to
the specific award. A corporate parent’s control does not establish that a grant
was paid to the parent or any ultimate owner.

## 4. Same acronym, different project

The workbook and UKRI Gateway to Research also identify QRVCSELs project 103444,
competition 1607_MM_SEMICON_LO. It is Closed, not project 133181. The three
participant rows are IQE PLC, Lancaster University and SIVERS PHOTONICS LIMITED.
Their offers (£74,743, £108,253 and £72,474) total £255,470, agreeing with GtR’s
funded value. CIP is not a named direct participant in those records. This is not
a comprehensive vendor/subrecipient exclusion. [T02] [T06]

The two source sets use similar titles. GtR’s 103444 abstract even uses feasibility
language while its category says Collaborative R&D. Narrative resemblance does
not override the distinct project and competition numbers. We do not label the
second project a successor or transfer the first proposal’s CIP relationship onto it.

The workbook’s CST Global Ltd (CRN 08731491) for 133181 is not silently merged with
SIVERS PHOTONICS LIMITED (CRN SC211759) for 103444. Resolving those companies’ wider
history is unnecessary to the selected CIP finding and was not undertaken here.

## 5. Scope and limits

- Searched the September 2026 FY2016–17-to-present workbook by title/acronym,
  competition code, project number, company-name variants and company number.
- Checked the 2017 competition table visually, including its condition and
  column headings; inspected current official company/PSC pages and GtR 103444.
- No private grant agreements, transaction-level bank records, withdrawal/cancellation
  documents or exhaustive ultimate-owner account filings were obtained.
- This is not a survey of all CIP, Huawei or UK awards. It establishes neither a
  covert flow nor the absence of every other transfer, collaboration or relationship.
- Edition 01’s Duke empty-result control differs from this case: here the £0 is a
  literal source field, not a zero inferred from a failed search.

**Bottom line:** conditional selection and registered corporate control are
documented. A paid £12,530 grant to CIP, Huawei UK or an ultimate parent is not
established by these records. The later matching project is recorded as withdrawn.

## Source appendix

Exact retrieval timestamps, original-response SHA-256 hashes and source notes are
in the [source register](../data/edition-02/sources.json). Curated [workbook
rows](../data/edition-02/participant-rows.csv) preserve both status fields and raw
names. See the [data dictionary](../data/edition-02/README.md),
[typed relationships](../data/edition-02/relationships.json) and
[search boundaries](../data/edition-02/search-boundaries.json).

| ID | Primary record | Exact locator / date |
| --- | --- | --- |
| T01 | [Innovate UK competition results][T01] | PDF/printed p21; 25 July 2017 funders panel; CIP row and qualification above table |
| T02 | [Innovate UK September 2026 workbook][T02] | Sheet1 row 1 headings; rows 30775–30778 (133181); 23338–23340 (103444); columns E:T |
| T03 | [CIP PSC register, company 04905488][T03] | Huawei UK entry; notified 6 April 2016; number and control fields |
| T04 | [Huawei UK PSC register, company 04295981][T04] | Active reporting statement; notified 28 September 2016 |
| T05 | [CIP company overview, 04905488][T05] | Company legal name and number |
| T06 | [UKRI GtR, project 103444][T06] | Reference/status, funding details and participant offers; data updated 6 July 2026 |
| T07 | [UKRI workbook publication page][T07] | FY2016–17-to-present download; last updated 3 September 2026 |

Only curated facts, short necessary source labels and attribution are published.
Original third-party PDF/HTML/workbook files remain with their publishers; local
cached copies are review evidence, not a public mirror. No blanket republication
licence is asserted. No personal addresses or irrelevant officer profiles are included.

## Edition history

12 September 2026: first complete technology dossier; supersedes the earlier scoped
exact-name nonmatch with a company-number match, preserves source spelling/statuses,
and separates project 103444 and the corporate-control record.

[T01]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a82cb8540f0b6230269cbd7/Emerging_and_Enabling_Technologies_Round_2_-_Up_to_12_Months_-_Competition_Results.pdf#page=21
[T02]: https://www.ukri.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IUK-030926-20260902-Innovate-UK-funded-projects-from-financial-year-2016-17-to-present.xlsx
[T03]: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04905488/persons-with-significant-control
[T04]: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04295981/persons-with-significant-control
[T05]: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04905488
[T06]: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=103444
[T07]: https://www.ukri.org/publications/innovate-uk-funded-projects-since-2004/