APOLITICAL GROUP LIMITED

Their core work

Apolitical is a London-based govtech company that built and operates a global peer-to-peer learning platform connecting public servants and government officials across countries. Their platform uses machine learning to help government employees discover policy solutions, best practices, and expert knowledge from peers worldwide. Their work sits at the intersection of civic technology, public sector capacity building, and governance innovation — helping governments adopt better policies faster by democratising access to what works elsewhere. They are a product company, not a consultancy: they built a real platform, funded partly through EU SME instruments.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 engagement in 2017 was a small €50,000 SME Phase 1 feasibility study with no recorded keywords — a classic early-stage validation of a business concept around improving public service. By 2020, they returned with a fully scoped SME Phase 2 project (€1.33M) with a detailed keyword profile: machine learning, peer-to-peer learning, govtech, civictech, societal trust, and global governance. This trajectory is a textbook SME instrument progression: prove the concept, then scale the platform. The addition of machine learning and societal trust building in the later project signals a shift from simple knowledge-sharing to algorithmic personalisation and broader democratic legitimacy goals.

Apolitical is moving toward embedding machine learning deeper into government knowledge discovery, with growing attention to societal trust — suggesting future work may touch AI governance, institutional accountability, or public sector digital transformation at scale.

How they like to work

Apolitical operates exclusively as a project coordinator and has no recorded consortium partners across both H2020 projects — indicating they run solo SME instrument grants rather than building broad research consortia. This is consistent with a product company using EU funding for R&D on their own platform rather than for collaborative academic research. Anyone looking to partner with them would likely be working with them as a technology provider or platform operator, not as a co-equal research partner.

Apolitical has no recorded EU consortium partners — both projects were solo SME instrument grants with Apolitical as the sole beneficiary. Their network is therefore not visible through CORDIS data, though their platform's global reach (serving governments across many countries) implies extensive informal relationships with public sector institutions worldwide.

What sets them apart

Apolitical is one of very few EU-funded private companies that built an actual live platform specifically for government officials — not a research prototype, but a functioning govtech product used by public servants globally. Their combination of machine learning, peer-to-peer design, and deep public sector focus gives them a rare profile: they understand both the technology and the institutional culture of government in a way that most tech SMEs do not. For anyone building projects around public sector digitalisation, open government, or policy capacity, Apolitical brings a working product and a global user base — not just research credentials.

Highlights from their portfolio

• APOLITICAL
  One of the largest SME Phase 2 grants in the govtech space (€1.33M), funding what the company describes as the first global peer-to-peer learning platform for government — a commercially ambitious, real-world product built with EU support.
• Apolitical
  A successful SME Phase 1 feasibility study (€50,000, 2017) that directly led to Phase 2 funding three years later, demonstrating a clear and validated progression from concept to platform.