The 2026 SBIR reauthorization (why this matters now)
SBIR and STTR expired September 30, 2025 and lapsed for six months. On April 13, 2026, President Trump signed S. 3971 into law, reauthorizing both programs through September 30, 2031 — the longest extension in program history.
Same day, the Department of Defense released 115 new open and pre-release topics on DSIP for the 26.1 solicitation. Typical open periods are 30–45 days. The compressed timeline favors firms who were ready before reauthorization — like us.
What actually changed
Strategic Breakthrough Phase II awards — new category for agencies with annual SBIR spend over $100M. Up to 0.5% of extramural R&D budget. Bigger checks, narrower eligibility.
Per-firm submission caps — agencies must enforce maximum proposal counts per firm. Firms that aimed for spray-and-pray submissions will have to prioritize.
Backlog clearance — agencies are processing stalled proposals while enforcing new caps. Expect chaos and opportunity.
Contracting officer training on Phase III commercialization authorities — making direct transition from SBIR to sustained contract vehicle more viable.
Our SBIR positioning
- Registered and ready — SAM.gov active, SBA-registered (April 16 2026 approval), DSIP active, Research.gov (NSF) fully set up with PI/AOR/Admin roles.
- 336 proposal drafts in the library across 14 agencies — Army, Navy, Air Force, DoD-wide, FBI, DHS, NSF, DOE, NIH, CDAO, NASA, NIST, SOCOM, USDA.
- Production federal past performance — SAMHSA ML system, federal health data platform, multi-agency cloud migration.
- Kaggle Top 200 founder — competition-proven modeling skill for AI/ML-heavy topics.
- Lean overhead — more SBIR budget flows to actual R&D, not to prime overhead.
Ways we partner
- Prime submission — for AI/ML topics where we can carry the full scope. Phase I typically $150–300K; Phase II $1–2M; Strategic Breakthrough Phase II potentially larger.
- Subcontractor on AI/ML scope — for primes who need deep AI expertise and want a SAM-registered small business subcontractor with direct federal past performance.
- STTR with research institutions — 40% minimum to the research partner; we lead the commercialization and productization work.
- Consortium participation — joined consortia relevant to DoD, intelligence community, and DoE topics.
Agencies we actively pursue
- DoD / DSIP — Army, Navy, Air Force, DoD-wide, SOCOM, CDAO. 26.1 topics currently open.
- NSF — fully registered on Research.gov with AOR/PI/Admin roles. Ready to submit.
- DHS S&T — AI/ML topics for homeland security missions.
- DOE — grid optimization, scientific ML, computing-related topics.
- HHS / NIH — health data, clinical AI, public health topics.
- NASA — AI for space, earth observation, autonomous systems.
- USDA, NIST, FBI, CDC — opportunity-driven participation.
How to engage
If you are a prime, research institution, or principal investigator looking for an AI/ML partner on an active SBIR or STTR topic, email [email protected] with the topic number and the scope you need. We'll respond within 24 hours with a fit assessment.