1,000+ Opportunities
Find the right grant
Search federal, foundation, and corporate grants with AI — or browse by agency, topic, and state.
Release 1 of the Department of War SBIR/STTR fiscal year 2027 Broad Agency Announcement carries 25 topics, a substantial share of them artificial intelligence, autonomy and robotics work, and it is the single highest-volume non-dilutive funding window open to U.S. deep-tech small businesses this autumn.
The cycle pre-released on 7 October 2026, opened for submission on 28 October 2026 and closes 25 November 2026 at 12:00 noon Eastern, giving roughly four weeks of writing time against topics that are written narrowly enough that proposal-topic fit, not general AI capability, decides outcomes.
AI and autonomy topics in this release include AI-enabled computer vision for air-to-air refuelling performance assessment and automated pilot debrief, agile wire harness manipulation and installation for unmanned aerial systems, autonomous technical data package to robotic task specification, and fusion of cooperative information sharing for uncrewed air systems.
Award structure differs by component and track: Phase I is capped at approximately 300,000 dollars for Air Force and Office of Strategic Weapons topics and 315,000 dollars for Navy topics, while Direct to Phase II topics award up to 2,000,000 dollars and skip the feasibility stage entirely for companies that can already evidence Phase I-equivalent work.
STTR topics require a formal research institution partnership with at least 40 percent of work performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by a single research institution. One Army xTech topic runs an earlier white paper deadline of 23 October 2026, so component-specific dates must be checked individually on DSIP.
Get a weekly digest of new grants like this
A free weekly digest of new foundation and federal funding opportunities as they're added to Granted. Unsubscribe anytime.
Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: U.S. small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, more than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents; STTR topics additionally require a partnering U.S. nonprofit research institution; principal investigator employment rules vary between SBIR and STTR. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows $300,000 - $2,000,000 (Phase I up to $300,000 for Air Force and OSW topics and up to $315,000 for Navy topics; Direct to Phase II up to $2,000,000). Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Applications for Department of War SBIR/STTR Fiscal Year 2027 Release 1 Broad Agency Announcement for Artificial Intelligence, Autonomy and Robotics Topics are due November 25, 2026. Build your timeline backwards from this date to cover registrations, approvals, and final submission checks.
Department of War SBIR/STTR Fiscal Year 2027 Release 1 Broad Agency Announcement for Artificial Intelligence, Autonomy and Robotics Topics is funded by U.S. Department of War (Department of Defense) SBIR/STTR Program, Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP), with Department of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Office of Strategic Capital participating components. Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
HUBBLE (High-throughput Unmasking of Biological Interactomes with Binding Landscape Emulators) is a DARPA Biological Technologies Office program to build fast computational emulators that predict protein-protein interactions across the human body far faster than atomistic simulation. Instead of full molecular dynamics, performers produce low-dimensional signatures of each interaction from the topology of its diffusive binding landscape. The goals are to extend coverage into the uncharacterized 'dark interactome' and to produce a hypercatalog of context-aware interactions with predicted probabilities, affinities and kinetics. Traumatic brain injury is the first use case, with causal, directional interaction networks validated experimentally. The program is a strong fit for teams combining machine learning on structural and interaction data, physics-informed models, computational biophysics and protein modeling; teams without a modeling core are a weak fit. Phase 1 runs 12 months with up to $2.0 million per team, and an 18-month Phase 2 is planned. Awards are Other Transactions for Research, and the model OT requires either a nontraditional defense contractor or nonprofit research partner with a significant role, or one-third cost share. Questions are due 3 November 2026, abstracts of up to six pages are due 5 November 2026 at 3:00 p.m. ET, and oral proposal packages are due 11 December 2026 at 3:00 p.m. ET, submitted through the DARPA BAA Tool.
This Air Force Direct to Phase II SBIR topic funds robotic systems that can perceive, grasp, route and install wire harnesses in unmanned aerial system airframes, one of the hardest remaining problems in aerospace manufacturing automation because cable harnesses are deformable, self-occluding and never present the same geometry twice. The technical content sits squarely in embodied artificial intelligence: learned visual perception of thin deformable objects under poor contrast, pose estimation and tracking through self-occlusion, contact-rich force-controlled manipulation, and policies that generalise across harness variants and airframe configurations rather than being hand-taught per part. The payoff for the Air Force is throughput and cost in UAS production and sustainment, where harness installation is still overwhelmingly manual and is a recognised bottleneck as drone production volumes rise. Because this is a Direct to Phase II topic, the award ceiling is 2,000,000 dollars and there is no feasibility phase, but applicants must demonstrate that they have already completed work equivalent to a Phase I feasibility study, which in practice means prior robotics or manipulation prototypes with documented results rather than a concept. The topic sits in Release 1 of the fiscal year 2027 Department of War SBIR/STTR announcement, which pre-released 7 October 2026, opened 28 October 2026 and closes 25 November 2026 at noon Eastern; applicants should verify the topic number and final close date on the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal.
FOCISAUS is an Air Force Direct to Phase II STTR topic for cooperative information sharing and sensor fusion across teams of uncrewed air systems, the multi-agent autonomy problem that sits between single-platform autopilots and genuine collaborative autonomy. The work funded here covers distributed data fusion across heterogeneous airborne sensors, shared world-model construction when platforms see different parts of the same scene, consistency and conflict resolution between agents holding contradictory tracks, and operation under degraded, intermittent and contested communications where naive sharing schemes either saturate the link or propagate bad state. Because it is an STTR topic, a formal partnership with a U.S. nonprofit research institution is mandatory, with at least 40 percent of the work performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by a single research institution, which makes this a natural fit for a startup paired with a university robotics, estimation or networking group. The Direct to Phase II structure carries a 2,000,000 dollar ceiling and no feasibility phase, so applicants must evidence completed Phase I-equivalent work in multi-agent autonomy or distributed fusion. The topic is part of Release 1 of the Department of War fiscal year 2027 SBIR/STTR announcement, which opened 28 October 2026 and closes 25 November 2026 at 12:00 noon Eastern; confirm topic availability and the live deadline on DSIP before committing to a teaming agreement.
Release 1 pre-released October 7, 2026, opens October 28 and closes November 25 at noon ET. Seven of 13 Air Force SBIR topics are Direct to Phase II at $2M, a new one-proposal-per-topic rule took effect October 1, and the Army xTech topic needs a white paper by October 23.
Read articleDoW's 2026 SBIR Broad Agency Announcement now operates on a monthly pre-release / quarterly close cadence. The 42 topics closing June 24 are the first test of whether the new rhythm produces the steady-state deal flow defense innovators have been asking for since 2022.
Read articlePublic Law 119-83 was signed April 13, 2026, reauthorizing SBIR/STTR through 2031. The Department of War issued its implementation announcement April 20 and released over 90 topics in six weeks. The new Accelerated Research for Transition (ART) Program restructures Phase II-to-acquisition transition, Strategic Breakthrough Awards offer $30M per project with 100% matching, and CMMC Level 2 self-assessment has been the compliance floor since November 10, 2025. Here is how to read the post-reauthorization DoW pipeline.
Read article