SBIR is the single highest-leverage federal path for a small AI firm. A Phase I award buys six months of non-dilutive R&D; a Phase II buys two years and a real government customer; Phase III is the off-ramp to production contracts with no competition. The catch is that the program is dense with rules, deadlines, and agency-specific wrinkles. The posts below are the working notes we use ourselves, not reheated overviews from the SBA landing page.
If you're new to SBIR, start with the 2026 reauthorization summary — it explains the per-firm caps and the new Strategic Breakthrough Phase II track that changed the math for AI companies. If you're already in the pipeline, the DoD 26.1 topic-selection piece is the one founders tell us they wish they'd read before their first submission.