Two technology startups have emerged as joint winners of a government procurement competition that saw innovative green computing solutions pitched to Whitehall in the hope of securing pilot contracts.
“Heata” and “GoCodeGreen” were selected from six finalist teams to deliver proof of concepts in collaboration with the Government Digital Service at an event entitled "Pitch in Whitehall" on Tuesday, after the panel of judges made a last-minute decision to name two winners rather than one.
Described by organisers as the first competition of its kind to award a central government contract through a startup pitch, the event was run jointly by the Startup Coalition and the Government Digital Service (GDS).
It sought UK-headquartered SMEs working on solutions across three pillars: hardware & infrastructure innovation, green operations and carbon attribution. These solutions are to help the UK public sector handle increasingly demanding AI and data workloads while meeting a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
The Permanent Secretary at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Susannah Storey, was present to announce the winners. She called the format of the competition “fantastic”.
She said: “We all know quite how important startups and scale ups are in the UK; this government is incredibly focused on innovation in the UK and it's fantastic to hear about all the things we've been doing.”
Heata’s solution focuses on using the heat generated by computer servers to provide UK households with hot water for free, reducing the environmental impact of computing while lowering people’s energy bills. This is achieved by retrofitting servers to domestic water cylinders, producing what Charlie Beharrell, heata’s commercial director, called “virtual data centres” within people’s homes.
GoCodeGreen’s technology allows organisations to measure and improve the environmental performance of digital services and AI products. It does this by undertaking full lifecycle-based assessments of products, from build to end of life, and displaying performance ratings and actionable insights in a unified portal.
The other finalists included “DigiUsher”, who proposed an AI-powered cost attribution and optimisation platform for computing workloads; and “Doubleword”, which claims to allow organisations to generate a large number of AI tokens from moderate computing resources.
Data centre sustainability metrics company “ReportZero”, and cloud and AI sustainability intelligence startup “GreenPixie”, proposed a joint product providing traceable sustainability measurements across a hybrid IT estate. Meanwhile “Zendo” seeks to decarbonise computing power by helping data centres maximise existing capacity.
They were selected to take part in the event following the submission of a technical capability brief and a two-minute video explaining the relevance of their ideas to the challenge.
The panel of judges consisted of Sonia Patel, the government’s chief technology officer; Antonia Whitecourt, chief operating officer for venture capital fund Seedcamp; Caroline Gorski, director of the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence; and Bryan Nelson, hosting and AI transformation lead in DWP Technology Services.
“Pitch in Whitehall” follows a series of “Pitch in Parliament” events organised by the Startup Coalition, although it is the first to offer winners a contract rather than simply allowing them to showcase their ideas to government.