@pipeworx/sbir

Connect: https://pipeworx.io/mcp — every tool in the catalog, including @pipeworx/sbir’s. Install: one-click buttons

No MCP client? Skip the connection: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs {"query":"..."} to find a tool below, GET /v1/tools/<name> for its schema, POST the same URL with arguments for the data — see For AI agents.

Tools: 5

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program data. Federal R&D awards to small businesses across NIH, DoD, NSF, NASA, DOE, and other agencies. ~$5B/year flowing to small companies for early-stage research. Free, no auth.

Why this matters for AI agents

For researching small-business tech innovation, federal R&D priorities, or “who’s getting funded for X technology?” SBIR is the source. Different from USAspending (which has the same data plus all other federal awards) — SBIR is curated, smaller, easier to search for early-stage R&D specifically.

Common flows:

• Award search. “AI / cybersecurity / clean energy SBIR awards?” → keyword search.
• Company history. “What has X received in SBIR funding?” → company-level search.
• Agency portfolio. “What’s NASA funding under SBIR?” → agency filter.
• Phase tracking. Phase I (proof of concept, ~$250k), Phase II (development, ~$1M+), Phase III (commercialization).

Auth

None. Every source below is keyless and publicly reachable.

Data sources

SBIR.gov’s own public REST API (api.www.sbir.gov/public/api/*) closed permanently around 2026-08-28 — every endpoint 403s, including the API root, and https://www.sbir.gov/api itself says the APIs are “undergoing maintenance” with no key or replacement offered. This pack is rebuilt on four other live sources instead:

sbir_search_solicitations queries all four in parallel and merges the results; each item carries its own program (SBIR/STTR) and source. A Grants.gov hit is only ever labelled SBIR or STTR when its own title says so, or its title carries a recognised NIH SBIR/STTR activity code (R43/R44 = SBIR Phase I/II, R41/R42 = STTR Phase I/II, SB1/SB0 = SBIR/STTR-set-aside mechanisms including NIH’s REACH hubs) — see classifySbirSttr() in src/index.ts. A plain keyword hit that fails both checks is dropped, so an unrelated NIH grant that merely mentions “SBIR/STTR” in its eligibility text is never presented as an SBIR opportunity.

sbir_search_awards / sbir_get_award / sbir_company_awards / sbir_agency_stats are rebuilt entirely on www.sbir.gov/awards. This is better than the closed API in one respect: sbir.gov’s own results banner (“Showing 1–10 of N results”) states an exact total, so sbir_agency_stats no longer has to report “at least 100” the way the old page-capped API did. There is no lookup-by-id endpoint anywhere in these sources — sbir_get_award searches by the identifier as a keyword and verifies a candidate’s own contract/tracking number matches before returning it.

sbir_agency_stats also takes an optional year (sbir.gov’s own calendar “Award Year” field — confirmed against a live award’s own detail page, not a federal fiscal year) and, when a specific agency is given, a funding_total dollar sum. sbir.gov/awards has no funding aggregate of its own — the dollar amount lives only on each award’s own detail page — so funding_total sums at most 25 matching awards and only claims funding_total_complete: true when that covers every match; a larger match count comes back with funding_total_complete: false and a funding_note naming exactly how many of how many were summed, never a capped-page sum presented as the full total.

A local bulk mirror of sbir.gov’s award CSV (data.www.sbir.gov/awarddatapublic/award_data.csv, ~367MB) was considered and rejected: www.sbir.gov/awards already serves the same corpus live, filterable server-side (keyword, agency, company, state, year), with no ingest pipeline or refresh workflow to maintain — proxying a live page beat mirroring a bulk file here.

Award structure

A Phase II award means the Phase I succeeded enough that an agency wants to invest more. Phase III means the technology graduated to procurement or larger contracts.

Participating agencies

11 federal agencies have SBIR programs: DoD, HHS (NIH), NASA, NSF, DOE, USDA, EPA, DHS, DOT, ED, NIST.

DoD and NIH together account for ~70% of SBIR/STTR dollars. Each agency has different priorities (DoD: defense tech; NIH: biomedical; NASA: space tech; NSF: foundational research).

Common pitfalls

• STTR vs SBIR. Both are Small Business set-asides. STTR (Technology Transfer) requires a research-institution partner; SBIR doesn’t. Funding is similar.
• Topic codes vary by agency. DoD has detailed topic codes (specific defense problems); NIH uses broader project topics. Cross-agency comparison by “topic” is messy.
• Phase III isn’t an SBIR award. It’s commercialization-track funding from other sources. Don’t expect to find Phase III dollar figures in SBIR data.
• Award dates lag. Awards appear publicly after legal cure periods. Recent quarters may be incomplete.
• Sole proprietorship to acquisition pathways. Successful SBIR companies often get acquired before commercialization. The award history doesn’t always tell you what happened to the technology after Phase II — track the company separately via SEC EDGAR if it went public.
• Small business definition. SBIR-eligible companies are <500 employees AND meet other size standards. Some “small” companies get acquired after winning Phase I; eligibility is checked at the time of award.

Tools

• sbir_search_awards — “Which companies won NASA SBIR Phase II awards for autonomy?” / “SBIR awards for [topic]” / “who received DoD SBIR funding” / “Phase I and Phase II awards at [agency]” — AWARDED federal Small Business
• sbir_get_award — Get full details for one SBIR/STTR award, identified by its contract number or agency tracking number (the contract/agency_tracking_number fields returned by sbir_search_awards). sbir.gov has no l
• sbir_search_solicitations — “Which SBIR or STTR solicitations are open at [agency]?” / “current SBIR topics” / “open DoD SBIR solicitations” / “SBIR proposal deadlines” / “SBIR opportunities for [research area]” — active SBIR/ST
• sbir_company_awards — Get complete SBIR/STTR award history for a company from www.sbir.gov/awards. Returns all awards with amounts, agencies, topics, and funding phases.
• sbir_agency_stats — “How many SBIR awards did DOE make last year, and how much total funding?” / “SBIR award count and dollar total for NASA in 2024” — per-agency SBIR/STTR TOTALS, live from www.sbir.gov/awards (the same