Assistance program
NOAA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program
$67.0 Million committed in FY2020–FY2026
- Agency
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commerce, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 11.021
- What it does
- The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) seeks to stimulate technological innovation in the private sector, strengthen the role of small businesses in meeting federal research and development needs, increase private sector commercialization of innovations derived from NOAA-supported research and development efforts, and foster and encourage participation by women-owned and socially disadvantaged small business firms in technological innovation.
- Who benefits
- Each year, NOAA sets aside a portion of its extramural R&D budget to fund research from small science and technology-based firms. The NOAA SBIR Program supports innovative research projects that fall within NOAA’s core mission of science, service, and stewardship.
- Who applies
- Applicant Eligibility (1) is organized for profit, with a place of business located in the United States, which operates primarily within the United States, or which makes a significant contribution to the United States economy through the payment of taxes or use of American products, materials or labor; (2) is in the legal form of an individual proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, joint venture, association, trust or cooperative, except that where the form is a joint venture, there can be no more than 49 percent participation by foreign business entities in the joint venture; (3) is at least 51 percent owned and controlled by one or more individuals who are citizens of, or permanent resident aliens in, the United States, except in the case of a joint venture, where each entity in the venture must be 51 percent owned and controlled by one or more individuals who are citizens of, or permanent resident aliens in the United States; and (4) has, including its affiliates, not more than 500 employees. The term "affiliates" is defined in greater detail in 13 CFR 121.103. The term "number of employees" is defined in 13 CFR 121.106.
- Authorized by
- Small Business Innovation Development Act (P.L. 97-219)
- Program site
- http://techpartnerships.noaa.gov/SBIR.aspx ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments
