How to get the Bono IA voucher for your company (and what to do until it arrives)

On 21 September 2026 the Spanish Government presented Plan IA360, a twelve-month roadmap for artificial intelligence in Spain. Among its measures is one that has caught the attention of many SMEs: a 600-million-euro voucher for companies to adopt AI with the help of technology providers. This is an honest guide to what is known, what is not, and what is worth doing now.

What the Bono IA actually is

In the official plan document it appears as flagship project number 11, “El bono empresarial de inteligencia artificial”, within the dissemination area. The text says it will fund “AI-based services and solutions provided by European technology companies that use foundation models as an input, adding their own value through development, integration, sector knowledge, data processing or process redesign”.

Two more sentences from the plan matter a lot for understanding the approach:

• The voucher “will not fund the mere subscription to licences; it targets services that transform the production processes of beneficiary companies.”
• “Implementation will include a prior maturity diagnosis, identification of a concrete use case and later measurement of the impact on productivity.”

In other words: it is not a voucher to buy a tool, but to pay for a project with a diagnosis, a use case and measured results.

Published figures and timeline

Item	What the plan says
Budget	600 million euros
Target	25,000 companies transformed
Controlled pilot	first half of 2027
General call	before the end of 2027

The plan also links the voucher to Red NEURONA, a network of AI demonstration centres whose first phase foresees a pilot with 100 SMEs in two regions before the end of 2026.

What is still unknown

It pays to be clear, because many unsourced figures are circulating:

• How much each company will receive. There are no amounts per company or brackets by size.
• Who will be able to apply. The presentation note and the Oficina Nacional de Emprendimiento post of 20 October 2026 speak of “SMEs and self-employed workers”; the plan document speaks of “companies” and “SMEs”. None of them is a legal text. The regulatory bases will decide. We compare the three texts in Bono IA for the self-employed.
• Who will manage it. Neither Red.es nor any other body is named.
• How providers will be accredited. There is no accredited-provider figure or registry yet. The plan does not mention Kit Digital or Kit Consulting, so whether that model will be reused is unknown.
• Concrete dates for the publication of the bases and the call.

Any website that gives you an exact amount today or offers to “reserve your voucher” is selling smoke.

Which programmes exist in the meantime

The two public programmes with an AI category that were already running are Kit Consulting (advisory services, with a 6,000-euro “AI advisory service” for SMEs with 10 to 249 employees) and Kit Digital (“AI-associated” categories for companies with 50 to 249 employees). At the time of writing, Acelera pyme lists their SME calls as closed. The bases of both were extended in January 2026 until funds are exhausted, so a new call is not ruled out, but none has been announced.

What to do now to arrive prepared

Calls of this kind are resolved in order of application or within short windows, and they require knowing exactly what you will do. What the plan describes as implementation requirements can be prepared today:

1. Maturity diagnosis. Which processes you have, which data exists and in what shape, which tools the team uses. One or two weeks of work.
2. A concrete use case. Not “use AI”, but “classify and answer 60 % of support emails” or “extract supplier-invoice data and create the accounting entry”. With baseline metrics.
3. A small pilot on real data. Small enough to do without a grant and real enough to know whether it works.
4. A milestone-based proposal. The plan speaks of “milestone payments” and staff training. A brief with phases, milestones and training will be ready to attach to the application as soon as it opens.

If you reach the call with those four elements done, the project moves from “we would like to use AI” to “we have this, we want this, and this is how we will measure it”. That is the difference between competing for a voucher and merely applying for one.

How we help

At ArtBits we do exactly that sequence: an AI audit and roadmap, a use case with document automation, assistants over your data or AI integration into your software, and a milestone-based proposal. When the provider procedure is published, we will apply. In the meantime you can ask us for a diagnosis without waiting for 2027.

We will update this article and the Bono IA page when the bases are published.