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Market research · October 21, 2026
AI SBIR and STTR Award Statistics: 2026 Report
By Darin ten Bruggencate, Founder, AI Industry Reviews
Federal early-stage grants give small US tech companies money to turn a research idea into a working product. The two main programs are Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR). Agencies from Defense to NSF run them, and the awards are large enough to fund a first prototype or a small team. In the last decade, a growing share of those awards has gone to projects that use machine learning or other AI methods.
We wanted to know how much of that early-stage money is flowing into AI, which agencies write the checks, and which states receive them.
Our analysts studied every SBIR and STTR award in the SBIR.gov bulk award file whose title, abstract or topic code matched AI or machine-learning phrases defined in Methodology. From 2015 through 2025, agencies made 8,281 AI awards totaling $4,900,827,793. Award dollars peaked in 2025 at $933,928,441. Through October 19, 2026, the file also shows 97 AI awards in award year 2026 totaling $69,085,473; that year is still incomplete as agencies continue to report.
In the following sections, we track AI award dollars and counts by year and phase, show which agencies and states account for the spending, and flag the partial 2026 year.
AI SBIR and STTR Award Dollars by Year and Phase
Phase I awards fund feasibility work. Phase II awards fund prototype development and are much larger. Counting both shows how AI funding in these programs grew from 2015 through 2025.
AI SBIR and STTR Award Dollars by Year and Phase, 2015-2025 (2026 partial)
| Award Year | Awards | Total ($) | Phase I Awards | Phase I ($) | Phase II Awards | Phase II ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 145 | $65,280,631 | 102 | $19,503,393 | 41 | $43,382,067 |
| 2016 | 177 | $95,428,529 | 112 | $22,611,993 | 57 | $61,896,367 |
| 2017 | 265 | $101,560,943 | 199 | $35,342,491 | 59 | $55,263,287 |
| 2018 | 388 | $168,184,645 | 288 | $53,435,763 | 100 | $114,748,882 |
| 2019 | 712 | $357,021,011 | 514 | $84,235,210 | 185 | $229,570,736 |
| 2020 | 1,072 | $516,400,251 | 750 | $113,648,147 | 283 | $345,207,539 |
| 2021 | 972 | $483,409,748 | 676 | $114,543,088 | 252 | $313,897,946 |
| 2022 | 995 | $641,837,956 | 612 | $121,591,713 | 271 | $369,967,086 |
| 2023 | 1,007 | $663,612,072 | 632 | $119,662,995 | 294 | $434,285,188 |
| 2024 | 1,270 | $874,163,565 | 792 | $154,328,307 | 375 | $555,464,155 |
| 2025 | 1,278 | $933,928,441 | 743 | $149,622,701 | 349 | $496,338,023 |
| 2026 (partial) | 97 | $69,085,473 | 57 | $16,401,634 | 37 | $48,384,012 |
| Total 2015-2025 | 8,281 | $4,900,827,793 | 5,420 | $988,525,800 | 2,266 | $3,020,021,275 |
- AI award dollars rose from $65,280,631 in 2015 to $933,928,441 in 2025, more than 14 times the 2015 level.
- The number of AI awards rose 26% from 2023 to 2024, from 1,007 to 1,270, and held at 1,278 in 2025.
- Phase II awards received $3,020,021,275, or 61.6% of AI award dollars, across 2015-2025. Direct to Phase II awards, which skip Phase I, added another $892,280,718 (18.2%).
- For small AI companies, Phase II is where federal grant money becomes large enough to fund a real product push.
AI Awards by Program: SBIR vs STTR
SBIR awards go to small businesses alone. STTR awards require a partnership with a research institution. Both programs fund AI work.
AI Awards by Program, 2015-2025
| Award Year | SBIR Awards | STTR Awards | SBIR Share of Awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 119 | 26 | 82.1% |
| 2016 | 145 | 32 | 81.9% |
| 2017 | 217 | 48 | 81.9% |
| 2018 | 335 | 53 | 86.3% |
| 2019 | 616 | 96 | 86.5% |
| 2020 | 920 | 152 | 85.8% |
| 2021 | 795 | 177 | 81.8% |
| 2022 | 773 | 222 | 77.7% |
| 2023 | 824 | 183 | 81.8% |
| 2024 | 1,054 | 216 | 83.0% |
| 2025 | 1,084 | 194 | 84.8% |
- SBIR remains the main channel. In 2025, SBIR was 1,084 of 1,278 AI awards (84.8%).
- AI STTR awards peaked at 222 in 2022, when they were 22.3% of AI awards, and numbered 194 in 2025.
- Companies that want university partners use STTR. Most AI award volume still runs through SBIR alone.
Which Agencies Fund AI SBIR and STTR Awards
Defense, health and NSF write most of the AI checks in these programs. The table below totals AI award dollars by agency for 2015-2025.
AI SBIR and STTR Award Dollars by Agency, 2015-2025
| Agency | Awards | Total ($) | Share of Dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | 4,788 | $2,940,367,423 | 60.0% |
| Department of Health and Human Services | 1,254 | $1,048,988,080 | 21.4% |
| National Science Foundation | 951 | $413,192,168 | 8.4% |
| Department of Energy | 472 | $237,651,043 | 4.8% |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration | 421 | $133,422,377 | 2.7% |
| Department of Homeland Security | 98 | $40,997,799 | 0.8% |
| Department of Commerce | 111 | $28,521,550 | 0.6% |
| Department of Transportation | 63 | $19,822,480 | 0.4% |
| Department of Education | 37 | $18,098,163 | 0.4% |
| Department of Agriculture | 54 | $13,304,959 | 0.3% |
| Environmental Protection Agency | 32 | $6,461,751 | 0.1% |
- Defense funded $2,940,367,423 of AI SBIR/STTR awards across 2015-2025, more than half of the total.
- HHS was second at $1,048,988,080. The National Institutes of Health made 1,215 of its 1,254 AI awards.
- NSF was third at $413,192,168, ahead of Energy and NASA.
- A company pitching AI for defense or health care is aiming at the two agencies that already concentrate most of this grant money.
Which States Receive AI SBIR and STTR Awards
Award location follows the company's state in the SBIR.gov file. California leads by a wide margin.
Top States for AI SBIR and STTR Award Dollars, 2015-2025
| State | Awards | Total ($) | Share of Dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 1,897 | $1,132,990,407 | 23.1% |
| Massachusetts | 728 | $474,873,063 | 9.7% |
| Virginia | 749 | $467,913,453 | 9.5% |
| New York | 461 | $303,117,426 | 6.2% |
| Texas | 477 | $255,261,028 | 5.2% |
| Maryland | 470 | $252,191,297 | 5.1% |
| Pennsylvania | 286 | $195,414,052 | 4.0% |
| Colorado | 325 | $175,620,467 | 3.6% |
| Florida | 277 | $168,300,144 | 3.4% |
| Ohio | 303 | $159,844,618 | 3.3% |
- California alone received $1,132,990,407, about 23.1% of AI SBIR/STTR dollars from 2015 through 2025.
- Virginia ranked third, ahead of New York and Texas. Defense funded 85.0% of its AI award dollars, the highest Defense share among the top 10 states.
- State economic-development offices that track AI startups can treat these rankings as a map of where federal early-stage AI money already lands.
What AI SBIR and STTR Trends Mean Going Forward
Federal early-stage grants have become a steady source of money for small companies building AI products. AI award dollars grew in every year from 2015 through 2025 except 2021.
Because most of the money comes in Phase II, a small AI company gets far more from these programs when it follows a Phase I award with a Phase II award.
So if you track early-stage AI capital, watch Defense and HHS Phase II awards by state in each SBIR.gov refresh, because those two agencies accounted for 81.4% of AI award dollars from 2015 through 2025.
Data Collection and Methodology
The AI Industry Reviews research team downloaded the SBIR.gov public award bulk file from data.www.sbir.gov/mod_awarddatapublic/award_data.csv on October 19, 2026. The file contained 219,649 awards across all years and topics.
An award is counted as an AI award when its award title, abstract or topic code matches any of these phrases or patterns (case-insensitive): artificial intelligence; machine learning; deep learning; neural network; computer vision; natural language processing; NLP; LLM; large language model; generative AI; reinforcement learning; transformer model; AI-based, AI-driven, AI-powered or AI-enabled; ML as a standalone token; convolutional neural; recurrent neural; or the standalone token AI in the title or the first 500 characters of the abstract. This definition is keyword-based. It will miss AI projects that use none of those words and will include some projects that mention AI only in passing.
Dollar amounts are the Award Amount field in USD as reported by SBIR.gov. Award Year is the bulk file's Award Year field. Phase and Program are the Phase and Program fields (Phase I / Phase II; SBIR / STTR). State is the company state in the file. Phase I and Phase II columns count awards whose Phase field is Phase I or Phase II. The file lists another 595 AI awards for 2015-2025, totaling $892,280,718, as Direct to Phase II; they are in the year totals and appear as Other/unspecified phase in the first chart, so Phase I and Phase II dollars do not sum to the year total.
The main series covers award years 2015 through 2025. Award year 2026 is shown as partial: SBIR.gov continues to update recent years as agencies report.
Sources
- AI Industry Reviews, AI SBIR and STTR Award Study: analysis of 8,281 AI-matched awards for 2015-2025 (plus partial 2026) in the SBIR.gov bulk award file, conducted October 2026.
- SBIR.gov, award data bulk download (award_data.csv), retrieved October 19, 2026
- SBIR.gov, Data Resources and Award Data Dictionary