Answers
Non-dilutive funding, answered.
Plain answers to the questions we hear most about non-dilutive funding for research and development: SBIR, STTR, and the wider landscape around them. If you are weighing whether these programs fit your company, start here.
Non-dilutive funding
The wider landscape: what non-dilutive funding is and the channels R&D companies can pursue.
01What is non-dilutive funding?
Non-dilutive funding is capital that does not take equity or ownership in your company. Government grants and contracts, prize competitions, and R&D tax incentives are the common forms. For research-driven companies the flagship programs are SBIR and STTR, which fund early-stage R&D at small businesses. Because you give up no ownership, non-dilutive funding is one of the highest-leverage ways to finance deep technical work: you keep your cap table intact while proving out the technology, and any equity investors you choose to bring in later are pricing a less risky company.
02What kinds of non-dilutive funding can an R&D company pursue?
The main channels are federal programs like SBIR and STTR across eleven agencies, other federal research grants (the kind listed on Grants.gov), state innovation and matching-grant programs, foundation and nonprofit grants, prize competitions such as those on Challenge.gov, and tax incentives like the federal R&D tax credit. Loans are sometimes grouped in because they avoid dilution, but unlike the rest they must be repaid. Which channels fit depends on your stage, your field, and how close your work sits to a government or mission need.
SBIR & STTR
The deepest well of non-dilutive R&D funding, and where our coverage runs deepest.
01What are SBIR and STTR?
SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) are federal programs that fund early-stage research and development at small businesses. Eleven federal agencies participate in SBIR and five of them also run STTR, each setting aside part of its R&D budget to make awards. The funding is non-dilutive, and the programs are built to move promising technology from idea to prototype to the market.
02Is SBIR a grant or a contract?
It can be either, depending on the agency. Some agencies award SBIR and STTR as grants (for example NIH, NSF, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science), while others award them as contracts (for example the Department of Defense and NASA). Grants generally fund research you propose, while contracts procure specific work the agency has defined, so contract topics tend to be more prescriptive.
03Is SBIR funding non-dilutive?
Yes. SBIR and STTR awards are non-dilutive: they fund your research without taking equity or ownership in your company. You keep ownership of the intellectual property you develop, subject to the government's standard rights to use what it paid for. That makes the programs a way to fund real R&D without giving up a piece of your business.
04What is the difference between SBIR and STTR?
The main difference is a required research partner. STTR requires you to formally partner with a nonprofit research institution, such as a university or a federal lab, and to split the work so the small business does at least 40 percent and the research institution at least 30 percent. SBIR does not require an outside partner, and the small business must perform most of the work itself: at least two-thirds in Phase I and at least half in Phase II. STTR also gives the principal investigator more flexibility, since they can be primarily employed by either the company or the partner institution.
05What are the three SBIR phases?
Phase I funds a feasibility study to prove the scientific and technical merit of your idea, usually a smaller award over six to twelve months. Phase II funds the full development effort to build the prototype or technology, a larger award over roughly two years, and is open to Phase I awardees. Phase III is commercialization: the programs do not fund it directly, but they let agencies award follow-on work, sometimes without a new competition.
06How competitive is SBIR?
It varies widely by agency and topic. Phase I success rates commonly land somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range at many agencies, though some run higher or lower and it shifts from year to year. How you do depends less on luck than on fit: how directly your proposal answers the agency's stated need, your technical approach, your team, and your commercialization case. Choosing topics you genuinely fit is the single biggest lever you control.
07How do I find SBIR topics for my company?
Agencies publish their open solicitations and topics on cycles, both on SBIR.gov and on each agency's own portal, such as the Department of Defense's SBIR/STTR site. Defense agencies tend to release specific, pre-defined topics under broad agency announcements, while agencies like NIH and NSF accept more investigator-initiated proposals within broad research areas. The hard part is matching your technology to the handful of topics that genuinely fit, across many agencies and overlapping deadlines. That is exactly the job Solicite is built to do.
08How do I win an SBIR Phase I?
No formula guarantees an award, but strong proposals tend to do the same things. They pick topics the company genuinely fits, answer the agency's stated need and evaluation criteria point by point, and make the technical feasibility, the team, and the path to commercialization easy to see. Following the solicitation exactly matters, and where the agency allows it, engaging early with the topic author or program contact helps you understand what they are really looking for. Solicite helps by showing you how each opportunity is likely to be scored, so you can decide where to compete.
Requirements watch
Verified requirement changes as agency cycles move. Programs change their rules mid-cycle more often than you'd think; we watch for it.
01Does NSF SBIR Phase I require a Letter of Support?
Yes. As of the NSF 26-510 solicitation cycle (2026), NSF requires at least one Letter of Support with an SBIR/STTR Phase I proposal and allows up to three. Phase II proposals require three and allow up to five, and Fast-Track proposals likewise require three. This is new, and easy to miss: the requirement appears in NSF's proposal-preparation instructions on seedfund.nsf.gov, not in the solicitation text itself. NSF wants market-validation letters from potential customers, strategic partners, or investors, each including the signer's affiliation and contact information. Two cautions: letters of commitment from consultants or subawardees named in your budget do not count as Letters of Support, and NSF explicitly discounts personal endorsements of your team or technology. The letters should carry the voice of the market, not read like a reference check.
Using Solicite
What the platform covers and where we draw the line.
01What does Solicite cover today?
Solicite tracks open SBIR and STTR solicitations across all eleven participating federal agencies, refreshed daily, together with hundreds of thousands of past awards that power our winner and program intelligence. Coverage is expanding into adjacent non-dilutive sources, including federal grant programs beyond SBIR and state and foundation funding, and the platform is built so each new source drops into the same matching, scoring, and monitoring you already use.
02Does Solicite write my proposal?
No, and that is deliberate. Agencies are pushing back on AI-written proposals: NIH has said that proposals substantially written by AI will not count as the applicant's own original work, and other agencies are signaling the same. So we point AI where it genuinely moves your odds instead: finding the right opportunities, scoring your fit, showing what each program actually rewards, and monitoring the calendar so you never miss a window. The writing stays yours, which also means it is not down-ranked by the AI-detection filters reviewers are starting to apply.
See which topics actually fit you.
Tell us what your company builds and we will match you against the open SBIR and STTR topics worth pursuing, ranked and explained, with a read on how each one is likely to score you. The proposal stays yours.
No credit card to see your first match.