1,000+ Opportunities
Find the right grant
Search federal, foundation, and corporate grants with AI — or browse by agency, topic, and state.
This listing may be outdated. Verify details at the official source before applying.
Find similar grantsSpark Grants is sponsored by Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University. Provides early-stage funding to startup projects, including those in robotics, to help founders reach significant milestones.
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 →Extracted from the funder's official program page to help you evaluate fit faster.
Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship - Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship › Resources, Funding & Talent Fall 2025 Spark Grants Announced! Project Olympus and the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship are excited to announce the recipients of the fall 2025 Spark Grants ! This early-stage funding is dedicated to helping founders reach significant milestones and accelerate from concept to reality.
Congratulations to the awarded startups, we look forward to watching these founders build, grow, and make a significant impact! Juicy EV : Delivering mobile park-and-walk-away charging that maximizes uptime for Electric Vehicle fleets. Relayd : Pioneering a more streamlined documentation and communication tool for nurses.
Sancho : Building human-assistive robots that enhance mobility in public spaces. The Project Olympus Spark Grant Fund helps startup projects kick-start their business ideas. It is funded by charitable gifts from alumni and other community donors.
A special thank you to Jean Mou whose generosity in creating the Lenore Blum Innovation Fund has provided critical funding to our early stage startups! If you are a current CMU student founder/co-founder that has worked with Project Olympus/Swartz Center programs (Customer Discovery Kickstart, NSF I-Corps, Innovation Scholars, Swartz Fellows) and/or received a Gebhardt Sandbox Fund or Beyond 2% grant award, you may be eligible to apply.
The fall 2025 funding cycle for Spark Grants is closed. The next Spark Grant funding cycle will be in fall 2026. “The Spark Grant and the support from the Project Olympus team made our startup possible.
The Spark Grant not only funded the prototyping of our product, enabling us to bring our idea to life, but also supported us in finding manufacturers, creating media, and marketing. ” - Kevin Murphy , Founder, OneBar “The Spark Grant provided us with the opportunity to delve into a significant market segment in Oregon.
Through this journey, sponsored by the grant, we were able to engage with potential customers face-to-face, garner valuable insights directly from the field, and forge connections that would have been unattainable had we remained remote. ” - Di Hu, Co-Founder, moss robotics, inc. “The Spark Grant we received was pivotal for Lead-In’s success. It helped us build and showcase our first prototype at SXSW.
From there we were able to secure our first customers and make a name for ourselves. Without it, we wouldn’t have gotten our idea from 0 to 1. ” - Maximillian Obasiolu , Founder, Lead-In Records “ For many founders, it's difficult to validate the scope of the problem you're trying to address.
The Spark Grant helped Certably validate our thesis with potential customers at the ideation stage, adding tremendous value when it came to building and deploying our minimum viable product!
" - Krish Visht, Co-Founder, Certably Eligible startup projects must: have a current student founder/co-founder be actively involved in Swartz Center / Olympus programming (Customer Discovery Kickstart, NSF I-Corps, Innovation Scholars, Swartz Fellows and/or received a Gebhardt Sandbox Fund or Beyond 2% grant award) have met over time with a Project Olympus / Swartz Center Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR).
Please carefully review the detailed eligibility requirements and uses of funds for the grant in the overview linked below before applying. The purpose of the Spark Grant program is to help students achieve an important and meaningful milestone or overcome a barrier in the discovery phase of their business.
Examples of grant-eligible costs are: attendance at a key conference or event to conduct customer discovery hiring an intern usually to develop an POC or MVP, or purchase specialty equipment to develop a POC or MVP. The following are NOT APPROVED uses for Spark Grants: Legal and patent fees, basic research, generic equipment such as a laptop, launch or execution of a business plan, or food and drink products.
Spark Grants By The Numbers 82 teams have been awarded grants since 2007 $275K in Spark Grants have been awarded $142M in additional funding received by awardees 16 teams have been accepted to Accelerator Programs 7 Spark Grant awardee teams have had exits Support Project Olympus Directly Support Project Olympus Spark Grants Support Lenore Blum Innovation Fund Projects are awarded up to $3K micro-grants from the Project Olympus Spark Grant Fund.
These grants are made possible through charitable contributions from alumni and Friends of Project Olympus. Generational Transfer Entrepreneurs Thank you to our Spark Grant Sponsors: James Jacob Huttner, M. D.
, Ph. D. Richard and Nancy Waichler Thank you to our Spark Grant Pre-Seed & Seed Level Crowdfunding Donors Thank you to our Spark Grant Entrepreneur & Bootstrap Level Crowdfunding Donors Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Open to Carnegie Mellon University students, staff, and faculty. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows up to $3,000. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Applications for Spark Grants are due November 10, 2026. Build your timeline backwards from this date to cover registrations, approvals, and final submission checks.
Spark Grants is funded by Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University. Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Yes — this listing is flagged as national in scope, so applicants across the U.S. may apply, subject to the sponsor's other eligibility criteria.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
Past winners and funding trends for this program
STRI26 offers $13 million over five years to a single multi-university team, requires a minimum of three U.S. institutions of higher education, and gates everything behind a mandatory preliminary proposal due November 3, 2026. Here is what a one-award competition actually asks of you.
Read articleThe University-Based Industrial Training and Assessment Center solicitation opened October 2 and closes October 30, 2026 at 3:00 PM ET. Up to $375,000 per track per year for five years, 20 percent cost share, ABET-accredited engineering required, submitted through Submittable.
Read articleThe full ASPECT NOFO (DE-FOA-0003647) posted September 4, 2026, eleven days later than the Notice of Intent predicted. The real document splits $58 million across two topic areas with anticipated award counts of 0-7 and 0-3, a cost share that jumps from 20 percent to 50 percent mid-project, a mandatory five-page concept paper due October 9, and a university eligibility restriction that decides team structure before anyone writes a word.
Read article