SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) are the principal federal grant programs open to for-profit companies. They fund research and development, and the government takes no equity.
Eleven federal agencies participate.
The phases
Phase I buys the answer to a technical risk question — can this work? Agencies may award up to $323,090 without SBA approval, though most fund well below that ceiling.
Phase II buys development, typically over 24 months, up to $2,153,927 without SBA approval.
Phase III carries no SBIR money at all. It is work deriving from your SBIR funded from other sources — and it comes with sole-source contracting authority, which is frequently the most valuable thing a Phase II produces.
The thing to know right now
Statutory authority expired on September 30, 2025 and the programs went dark for roughly six months — no new solicitations, no new awards. They were reauthorized on April 13, 2026 and now run through September 30, 2031.
The reauthorization also brought per-company proposal caps from FY2027, mandatory national security screening of foreign ties and investment sources, and a new Strategic Breakthrough Award category up to $30 million.
Most SBIR advice online predates this and describes different rules.
Is this you?
SBIR funds the resolution of a genuine technical uncertainty. If your hard problem is distribution, sales or product-market fit, you do not have an SBIR project — those are real problems, but not what this money buys.
Finding them in OpenGrants
Search for your technology area, or filter to for-profit applicant type. SBIR topics from topic-driven agencies like Defense read very differently from open-call agencies like NSF.
Going deeper
SBIR & STTR — the non-dilutive playbook covers the whole program. NSF and DoD have separate guides because they are genuinely different processes.