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xTechAutonomy is one of the U.S. Army's xTech family of prize competitions, which give eligible small businesses a structured route to pitch novel technology directly to Department of War evaluators, earn non-dilutive prize money, and progress into SBIR Phase I and Phase II awards without entering a separate open-topic SBIR competition.
The competition focuses on autonomy-related innovation, explicitly including unmanned systems, drones and autonomous ground vehicles, together with the supporting technology stack of advanced communications, power systems, sensors, and artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for military use.
The four-stage funnel runs from a short concept white paper, through an in-person or virtual technology pitch, to an SBIR Phase I award and finally a Phase II demonstration award, with cash prizes at each of the first two stages serving to compensate companies for the effort of engaging.
For AI companies the appeal is the low entry cost: a concept white paper is a far lighter lift than a full SBIR proposal, and the pitch stages give direct exposure to Army programme managers and transition pathways that are otherwise difficult for a company with no defence contracting history to reach.
The broader xTech programme remains highly active in autonomy and robotics, with the related xTechHumanoid competition concluding in September 2026 with a 490,000 dollar prize pool across five winners plus follow-on contracts of up to 1,250,000 dollars, and xTech|Edge Strike: Ground running a 2,000,000 dollar pool with individual prizes up to 275,000 dollars, which indicates the Army's continuing appetite for embodied autonomy from non-traditional vendors.
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Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Participants must be small, independent, U.S. for-profit businesses; non-profit organizations, universities and individuals are excluded, which distinguishes xTech sharply from the Army's basic research BAAs. More than 50 percent of an eligible firm's equity must be directly owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and the firm must have no more than 500 employees including affiliates. The majority-U.S.-ownership rule is a hard filter that catches venture-backed autonomy startups with significant foreign investment, and firms should verify their cap table against it before investing effort. Because progression to Phase 3 and Phase 4 results in SBIR awards, standard SBIR eligibility and performance-location requirements apply at those stages. Technology scope covers autonomy broadly, including unmanned aerial, ground and maritime systems, plus the enabling layers of communications, power, sensors and AI/ML; a pure software AI capability with no articulated path onto an Army platform or into an Army workflow is the common mismatch. No deadline is recorded here because xTech competitions run as discrete, irregularly scheduled cycles rather than on a fixed annual calendar, and the published xTechAutonomy phase dates correspond to a prior cycle. Prospective applicants should monitor the xTech competitions page at xtech.army.mil/competitions for the current xTechAutonomy cycle and for the closely related autonomy and robotics competitions, several of which were active through 2026. Entrants should also note that the prize competition and the SBIR awards are governed by different rules, and should read the specific competition announcement for each cycle rather than relying on prior-cycle terms. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows xTechAutonomy awards up to 500,000 US dollars in cash prizes across the competition phases, structured in four stages: Phase 1 concept white paper winners receive 5,000 dollars each, up to 40 winners; Phase 2 technology pitch winners receive 15,000 dollars each, up to 20 winners; Phase 3 winners receive an SBIR Phase I award of 250,000 dollars each, up to 20 awards; and Phase 4 winners receive an SBIR Phase II award of 1,900,000 dollars each, up to 4 awards. amount_min is recorded as 5,000, the first-stage prize that is the realistic entry-point outcome for most entrants, and amount_max as 1,900,000, the SBIR Phase II value at the top of the funnel. The structure is the essential thing to understand: the 500,000 dollar cash prize pool and the SBIR awards are separate instruments, so the headline prize figure dramatically understates the programme's value, while the 1,900,000 dollar Phase II figure overstates what an average entrant receives. The funnel narrows from 40 to 20 to 20 to 4, meaning a company entering at the white-paper stage has roughly a one-in-ten chance of reaching Phase I and far lower odds of Phase II. All of it is non-dilutive. The sequencing is the main attraction for early-stage autonomy companies: the 5,000 and 15,000 dollar prizes are effectively paid access to Army programme evaluators, and reaching the SBIR stage requires no separate open-topic competition. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
U.S. Army xTechAutonomy Prize Competition with SBIR Phase I and Phase II Follow-On for Small Business Autonomy, Unmanned Systems and AI/Machine Learning Technologies is funded by U.S. Army, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT)), xTech Program Office. 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 ONR Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (N00014-25-S-B001) is the Office of Naval Research's primary mechanism for soliciting research proposals across all naval science and technology priority areas. The BAA accepts proposals on a rolling basis through September 30, 2026 and covers ONR's full spectrum of research interests with particular emphasis on AI-related topics including autonomous maritime systems, human-machine teaming, machine learning for sensor fusion, cooperative autonomous swarm technology, undersea autonomy, and AI-enabled decision superiority. Proposals can be funded through multiple mechanisms including individual investigator grants, the Young Investigator Program (~$510K over 3 years for early-career faculty), and Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awards ($1.5M/year for 3-5 years for research teams). ONR recommends contacting relevant program officers before submitting to discuss alignment with current research priorities. The BAA supports basic research (6.1), applied research (6.2), and advanced technology development (6.3) across the full range of naval-relevant science and engineering disciplines.
PRIMED-AI is a new NIH Common Fund programme, Precision Medicine with AI: Integrating Imaging with Multimodal Data, which combines medical imaging with other health data to build AI-powered clinical decision support tools for personalised medicine. This opportunity, RFA-RM-27-014, funds the programme's Validation Center: a dedicated hub that independently evaluates and characterises the AI-enabled, image-based multimodal clinical decision support tools developed elsewhere in the consortium. The structural logic matters for applicants. NIH has separated tool-building from tool-validation and is paying separately for the second, which signals institutional recognition that self-reported performance claims from developing teams are not sufficient evidence for clinical AI. The Center's remit covers verification, validation, interoperability and uncertainty quantification, so the deliverable is a reproducible evaluation capability rather than a set of papers. It operates as a U54 cooperative agreement, meaning NIH staff are substantively involved and the Center must work in concert with the PRIMED-AI Logistics Center and the Data-to-Model and Model-to-Clinic award recipients. The RFA was released on 30 June 2026 with applications due 2 October 2026. For academic groups that have built credible AI evaluation methodology, particularly in radiology, imaging informatics or biostatistics, this is an unusually direct route to becoming the reference evaluator for a major federal AI health programme, and the position carries influence over how clinical AI performance gets measured well beyond the life of the award.
RFA-RM-27-015 funds a single Logistics Center as the coordinating hub of the NIH Common Fund's PRIMED-AI program, Precision Medicine with AI: Integrating Imaging with Multimodal Data. The award is a cooperative agreement, meaning substantial NIH scientific and programmatic involvement is built in rather than incidental, and it is administered by NIBIB on behalf of the Common Fund. The Center operates through three integrated cores: Administration, which runs the steering committees and develops consortium policies; Evaluation, which assesses progress across the funded portfolio; and Outreach, which maintains a web portal for sharing AI-based clinical decision support tools and facilitates engagement between researchers, clinicians and patient communities. The strategic point for applicants is that this is the only coordinating award in a multi-award program whose other components, the Data-to-Model Academic-Industrial Partnerships, Model-to-Clinic and Multi-use Frameworks Playbook RFAs, are separately competed and separately funded. The Logistics Center therefore does not generate its own AI models; it is scored on its capacity to run a consortium, set data and tool-sharing policy, and build infrastructure that makes other teams' clinical decision support tools discoverable and reusable. Applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization on the date specified for the relevant review cycle, with an earliest project start date of 2 October 2026 and a maximum project period of five years.
After SBIR reauthorization, the U.S. Army released five new small-business topics under Army FUZE — Ka-Band metamaterial radar, a Li-ion 6T battery open topic, in-transit-visibility blockchain, modular UAS payloads, and the xTech|Phantum prize competition. Awards run from $150K to $300K per Phase I. But the bigger story is the Army's shift from funding parts to funding whole systems. Here is what each topic funds and how to compete.
Read articleNIST's MEP Technology Accelerator Pilot puts roughly $20 million behind each of two topics: additive manufacturing for aerospace components and a domestic critical minerals supply chain. Only current MEP Center primary awardees can apply. The NOFO has slipped from Q2 2026 to late 2026, and the public teaming partner list is the single entry point for everyone else.
Read articleThe Department of War's Accelerated Research for Transition program matches a sponsoring program office dollar-for-dollar to push a Phase II SBIR into fielding. There is no solicitation, no proposal deadline, and no way to self-nominate — the gate is a Technology Transition Agreement signed by someone who already wants your technology. Here is how that changes what a Phase II should be built to produce.
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