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TechAccess: AI-Ready America (NSF 26-508) is a national initiative to accelerate artificial intelligence readiness and adoption across the United States through three coordinated components.
First, State and Territory Coordination Hubs: up to 56 awards, at most one per state, the District of Columbia or US territory, funding a statewide convening entity that manages AI learning navigation, strategic planning, deployment support, training coordination and sector-specific initiatives.
Second, a National Coordination Lead that supports the hubs, enables knowledge sharing, manages an AI Deployment Network, engages industry and philanthropy, and coordinates sector strategies. Third, AI-Ready Catalyst Award competitions, which are topic-driven competitions piloting innovative approaches intended for national scaling.
The estimated programme budget is 168,000,000 to 224,000,000 US dollars, with per-award funding of about 1,000,000 dollars per year for three years and the possibility of one additional year for phase-out or transition planning.
The solicitation runs in three rounds with required Letters of Intent: Round 1 LOI 16 June 2026 and full proposal 16 July 2026; Round 2 LOI 15 December 2026 and full proposal 15 January 2027; Round 3 LOI 1 June 2027 and full proposal 1 July 2027, all at 5 p. m. local time.
The Letter of Intent is required, not advisory, so missing it forecloses the round. The structural logic is distinctive among NSF programmes: this is a coordination and capacity-building network closer in shape to an extension or Manufacturing USA model than to a research directorate solicitation, and proposals are evaluated on statewide convening credibility as much as on technical merit.
The recorded deadline of 15 December 2026 is the Round 2 Letter of Intent, the next actionable date.
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Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Eligibility follows NSF PAPPG Chapter I.E, which admits institutions of higher education, nonprofit non-academic organisations such as independent museums, observatories, research laboratories and professional societies, and certain other entities; unaffiliated individuals are explicitly ineligible. The binding constraint is structural rather than categorical: there is a limit of one proposal per organisation, and NSF intends to make at most one State or Territory Coordination Hub award per state, DC or territory. The practical effect is that the competition is largely resolved within a state before submission, and an applicant that has not secured the endorsement and participation of the obvious statewide partners - the public university system, community college system, state education and workforce agencies, major employers, and regional nonprofit and library networks - is unlikely to prevail against one that has. There is no restriction on the number of proposals per principal investigator or co-principal investigator, so individual researchers may appear on multiple submissions even though their institutions may each submit only one. A hub proposal must describe a credible statewide convening function covering AI learning navigation, strategic planning, deployment support, training coordination and sector-specific initiatives, which calls for organisational and governance capability rather than a research portfolio; proposals written as research projects are a poor fit. The National Coordination Lead role is a separate and singular award requiring national reach, experience managing distributed networks, and the ability to engage industry and philanthropy. AI-Ready Catalyst Award competitions are topic-driven and will have their own announcements and terms, so applicants interested in piloting a specific approach rather than running a hub should track those separately. Project duration is three years with one possible additional year justified by phase-out or transition need. Letters of Intent are required for every round; applicants should confirm current dates and all requirements in the solicitation on nsf.gov before committing effort. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows per-award funding is approximately 1,000,000 US dollars per year for three years, with the possibility of one additional year, so amount_min and amount_max are both recorded as 3,000,000 to reflect the expected total value of a State or Territory Coordination Hub award. The programme-level envelope is 168,000,000 to 224,000,000 US dollars estimated across up to 56 hub awards plus a National Coordination Lead and the AI-Ready Catalyst competitions. The one-hub-per-state structure is the dominant cost and strategy constraint: NSF intends to fund at most one Coordination Hub per state, the District of Columbia, or US territory, and limits each organisation to a single proposal, which means the real competition is intrastate and happens before submission. Applicants should expect that the winning proposal in any state is the one that has already assembled the coalition - university system, community colleges, state workforce and education agencies, employers, libraries and regional nonprofits - rather than the one with the strongest single-institution capability. Budget accordingly: a hub award at roughly 1 million dollars a year is a coordination and convening budget, not a research or infrastructure budget. It realistically supports a small professional staff, subawards to partners, convening and travel, and evaluation; it does not fund compute procurement, large-scale training delivery, or capital. Teams that propose direct service delivery at scale will be underfunded against their own plan. Cost-share is not indicated but in-kind partner commitments function as de facto match and strengthen a proposal. The three-year base with a possible fourth year for phase-out or transition planning signals that NSF expects hubs to find sustaining support, so a credible sustainability plan is a scored element rather than boilerplate. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Applications for NSF 26-508 TechAccess AI-Ready America State and Territory Coordination Hubs National Coordination Lead and AI-Ready Catalyst Awards are due December 15, 2026. Build your timeline backwards from this date to cover registrations, approvals, and final submission checks.
NSF 26-508 TechAccess AI-Ready America State and Territory Coordination Hubs National Coordination Lead and AI-Ready Catalyst Awards is funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). 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.
The DARPA Surgical Competition (DSC) is a $3.5 million prize challenge run by DARPA's Biological Technologies Office under 10 U.S.C. 4025. Its goal is to advance robotic and AI-enabled surgical systems that can deliver trauma care closer to the point of injury with fewer specialists available. There are two lanes. Lane 1, surgical collaboration, covers robots that assist a surgeon. Lane 2, surgical independence, covers robots performing surgical tasks with increasing autonomy. In each lane, first place wins $1 million, second $400,000, and third $100,000. Component gate prizes are $235,000 for the top Physical Capability Gate performer, $100,000 for the Rapid Learning Gate, and $75,000 for the Medical Knowledge Gate, and teams meeting each gate's minimums receive $3,000 per gate. Up to 10 teams will qualify. The qualification window runs from 11 September 2026 and closes on 13 November 2026 at 4 PM ET, with rolling review. The schedule also includes a virtual second industry day on 4 November 2026, an in-person workshop on 15-24 January 2027, and the scored competition on 20-26 March 2027. Teams are self-funded, and there is no full proposal and no cost share.
NSF's Dear Colleague Letter NSF 26-017 (published March 24, 2026, updated October 27, 2026) invites proposals that use AI and other emerging technologies to strengthen children's online safety and privacy, expand educational opportunities, support well-being, and help educators and parents, including through AI literacy and digital literacy. The DCL has no dedicated budget. Proposals are submitted through participating programs such as NSF FINDERS Foundry (NSF 26-507), which expects about 50 Planning awards of up to $50,000 and about 20 Development awards of up to $300,000 for one year, and TechAccess: AI-Ready America (NSF 26-508). Proposal titles must begin 'Empowering Children to Thrive DCL:'. The next FINDERS Foundry Development proposal deadline is November 18, 2026 at 5 p.m. submitter local time; other deadlines follow the participating solicitations.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Rapid Capabilities Office, working with the Office of Naval Intelligence and Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, is running a One Nation Innovation challenge on the GoColosseum marketplace. The challenge is Tactical ISR Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED): Adaptive AI and Autonomy at the Tactical Edge. It seeks AI and computer vision that detect, track, and re-identify objects in imagery from small unclassified unmanned aerial systems. Systems must keep custody across multiple simultaneous detections and re-identify targets after custody is lost. They must also use low-shot learning that needs minimal labelled data, run at the edge on size-, weight- and power-constrained hardware without the cloud, and integrate with GEOINT formats and the Tactical Assault Kit (TAK). Winning solutions may receive prototype awards under Other Transaction Authority, and the amount and number of awards are not published. The submission window opened on 22 October 2026 and closes on 19 November 2026 at 3:00 PM CST. Applicants must join GoColosseum to apply.
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