FY2026 Commercial Motor Vehicle Operator Safety Training Program (CMVOST)

The Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) is a Federal formula grant program that provides financial assistance to States, and U.S. Territories to reduce the number and severity of crashes, injuries, and fatalities and hazardous material incidents involving commercial motor vehicles. Funding Opportunity Number: FM-MCG-27-001. Assistance Listing: 20.218. Funding Instrument: G. Category: T. Award Amount: $470K – $55M per award.

FY2026 Phase I Genesis Mission Opportunity is sponsored by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Technology Commercialization. This SBIR/STTR opportunity targets four AI-driven topic areas: biotechnology, quantum computing, materials design, and autonomous laboratories, supporting DOE's Genesis Mission. DOE intends to make approximately 40 awards totaling $10,000,000 for Phase I. The program requires a short Pitch application first; only companies invited after Pitch review can submit a full application.

DLA Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) FY2026 is sponsored by Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The DLA is conducting a CSO to solicit solution briefs in response to various Areas of Interest (AOIs). The CSO is authorized by 10 U. S. C. § 3458 and DFARS Subpart 212. 70. Awards may be fixed-price commercial contracts or other transaction agreements.

USDA NIFA's SBIR/STTR Phase I program is the principal non-dilutive federal funding channel for small businesses commercializing agricultural technology, and it has become a significant AI funding source without ever being branded as one. The program is organized into ten topic areas rather than a single AI call, which means applicants must locate their AI work inside an agricultural problem area - plant production and protection, animal production and protection, forests and related resources, food science and nutrition, rural and community development, aquaculture, biofuels and biobased products, small and mid-size farms, and agriculturally related manufacturing and alternative and renewable energy. In practice this structure rewards proposals framed around a specific production constraint rather than around a modeling technique. Machine learning for crop and soil monitoring from remote sensing, computer vision for pathogen and pest detection, autonomous harvesting and weeding robotics, decision-support and yield-prediction systems, and sensor fusion for livestock health all fit comfortably, but reviewers are agricultural scientists and commercialization specialists, not ML researchers, and proposals that lead with architecture rather than with the farm-level problem tend to score poorly. Phase I awards run from $125,000 to $181,500 for feasibility work, a range that has drifted upward in recent cycles, with Phase II available to successful Phase I awardees for full R&D. Eligibility is the standard SBIR profile: a for-profit small business concern qualifying for research or R&D purposes, US-based and majority US-owned; the STTR variant requires formal cooperative R&D with a nonprofit research institution, which is the natural route for teams spinning technology out of a land-grant university. Timing is the practical difficulty - NIFA has historically released the Phase I RFA around July with applications due roughly twelve weeks later in early October, but exact dates shift year to year and the FY2026 date was still pending at the time of review. Applicants should register on SAM.gov and Grants.gov well in advance and subscribe to Grants.gov alerts, since the release-to-deadline window is short for a program that expects a commercialization plan alongside the technical narrative.