Innovate UK's 2026 Women in Innovation Awards.
Congratulations to Mary Blake, founder of SeeMe Ltd who has been named as one of Innovate UK's 2026 Women in Innovation Award winners. Mary Blake is a member of AwakenHub community who has taken part in a number of opportunities through the community, including Trade Missions to the US and the WeScale programme.
The Derry-based technology company SeeMe Ltd has secured a £75,000 Innovate UK 'Women in Innovation' Award, with CEO and Founder Mary Blake selected from a record 1,590 applicants from across the UK.
Mary is among just 61 women entrepreneurs selected nationally for this year’s Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards, and one of only two successful applicants from Northern Ireland. Her businesses will benefit from 12 months of business support, training, networking and role-modelling opportunities.
Now in its tenth year, the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards support pioneering women entrepreneurs to maximise the impact of their innovative ideas, with a particular focus on innovations aligned with the UK’s high-growth sectors identified in the Industrial Strategy. Since the awards were launched in 2016, more than £15 million has been invested in 260 women founders through the programme.
SeeMe is an AI-enabled personal archive platform that allows users to transform collections of photographs into rich, multi-layered narratives, creating valuable intergenerational archives. The company’s proprietary technology enables people to preserve the precious stories, memories, and emotions behind their photographs, rather than just relying on large, context-less Image dumps on their phones or in the cloud. It also means people can securely share their images and associated memories on a secure, privacy-first platform.
The Innovate UK funding will support SeeMe Ltd as it enters a 12-month SeeMe Ltd Narrated Archives Platform (SNAP) project. The project will focus on the next stage of development, progressing SeeMe’s existing technology through further testing and validation.
“Being one of only 61 successful applicants out of almost 1600 innovative companies across the UK is huge validation of the work we have done to date. I am incredibly proud to be an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award Winner as it provides the type of very real, tangible support that is so essential to companies like SeeMe Ltd, which are set to grow globally but which are being built in a local region like Derry City outside of our main traditional economic hubs.” Mary Blake, SeeMe Ltd.
A huge congratulations to Mary Blake on this fantastic achievement. We’re delighted to celebrate her success and wish her every success as she embarks on the next 12 months.
