SBIR Reauthorization 2025: What Small Businesses Need to Know
Is the SBIR program about to leave you high and dry, or is now the time to double down on government R&D funding?
This week on the Intrepid Gov Proposals YouTube channel, we dig into the 2025 SBIR reauthorization—what it means, what’s at stake, and how founders should approach bidding in this climate.
If you’re a small business owner or startup founder seeking non-dilutive funding via SBIR or STTR programs, get behind the scenes of one startup debating exactly that. No time to listen? Scroll for key takeaways and FAQs.
🎥 Watch the Debate: SBIR Reauthorization 2025
Key Highlights from Two Founder Perspectives
SBIR & STTR: Still the Best Non-Dilutive Funding option for Startups playing the long game
Federal programs like SBIR and STTR return $6–$22 to the government for every $1 spent. That’s better than the S&P 500!
SBIR/STTR isn’t just for defense—think cancer research, internet access, and breakthrough tech across sectors.
What Does “Reauthorization” Mean?
Congress must reauthorize SBIR every three years. Without it, funding and opportunities vanish overnight.
The current authorization expires September 30, 2025.
What’s Different This Year?
There’s talk of making SBIR permanent—but no guarantees.
Eligibility rules are under review, especially for companies with VC backing or foreign ownership.
Uncertainty is high: Delays and topic cancellations were common during the last reauthorization in 2022.
Should You Bid on SBIR/STTR Right Now?
Pros: If a topic is a perfect fit, you don’t want it to go to a competitor.
Cons: Preparing a proposal is time-consuming and risky if the program lapses.
Ruthless bid/no-bid criteria are more important than ever—only pursue topics that are a clear match for your tech, team, and growth goals.
Efficiency is Key
Use templates, AI, and calculators to reduce the time spent on proposals.
Intrepid’s Cost Volume Builder
Steal our favorite AI prompts for grant and contract proposals
Prior winning proposals for reference
Timebox your effort and minimize disruption to your business.
FAQ
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The SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program is a federal initiative that provides non-dilutive funding to U.S.-based small businesses for research and development of innovative products and technologies. The goal is to help small businesses bring new ideas to market while meeting the needs of various government agencies. SBIR awards are competitive and do not require giving up equity in your business if you win. We break down the program further on the blog.
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A: SBIR reauthorization is Congress’s process of approving continued funding for the Small Business Innovation Research program. Without reauthorization, the program (and its funding opportunities) would end, impacting thousands of startups and innovative small businesses.
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September 30, 2025
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Only if the topic is a strong fit for your business and you’d be disappointed to see a competitor win. Set clear bid/no-bid criteria and don’t overcommit resources unless the opportunity is worth the risk.
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Eligibility requirements tightened, especially for companies with VC or foreign investment. Some awarded topics saw delays or cancellations due to funding uncertainty.
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Use templates and proposal tools to minimize time spent per bid. Focus on topics that align with your existing technology and growth strategy. Diversify your funding sources when possible. We go more in depth in our approach on the blog.
Read the transcript of our conversation about SBIR reauthorization 2025 below
Lori-Lee: is the SBIR program about to leave you high and dry, or is now the time to double down on government programs?
For small businesses, SBIR and STTR are alternatives to venture capital. It's federal government funding to support research and development across all kinds of different sectors and. Why it is so popular is because for every dollar spent on the SBIR program, the government gets anywhere from $6 to $22 back, depending on the agency.
And just to put that into context, that's better than a return on the s and p 500. This year the SBIR program is up for reauthorization. And if this is your first time you're considering applying for it, it's a hell of a year to join, and if you're on the other side of that, and you've been around a while, you will understand why this year's SBIR reauthorization is a little bit different to how things were in 2022, which don't get me wrong, it also sucked back then.
Before we get too far into this rabbit hole, what is the SPIR program going beyond? Its America's seed fund, which is fantastic, but what, what actually is it?
Sofia: Yes, we absolutely should talk about what the program is and also why does it need to be reauthorized. The SBIR and STTR funding, as you mentioned, are federal funding for us small businesses. There are specific eligibility criteria. So Apple cannot go apply for an SBIR and then win funds through it, right?
You have to be a US based small business for profit. 51% US owned those, the, the high level eligibility criteria. There are sometimes more specific criteria for. Different agencies.
Historically, this program has delivered over 70 billion in research, and all of this research has been technology, through hardware.
It's not just weapons development. This is cancer research we're talking about. This is research on. Internet access. It's a widespread of technological breakthroughs that can trace their origins back to the SBIR and the STTR program. , I think it's useful to talk about why does this program need to be reauthorized?
What does reauthorization mean in this context, and why is it happening this year?
Lori-Lee: The SBIR program needs to be reauthorized periodically in. Plain English. What that means is Congress, every three years has to say, yes, we still want to fund this thing. If they don't, the money and all the opportunity and ROI with it go away pretty much overnight. So why does this matter for small business?
Because uncertainty. Equals risk. No one wants to spend weeks of their time and thousands of dollars on an application for a program that just disappears with the, uh, swipe of a pen or click of a mouse
How the reauthorization process works, it's follows a pretty standard timeline. It happens every three years. The last SBIR reauthorization was in 2022, and we experienced that one firsthand. This one is set to expire on September 30th, 2025.
Sofia: There's legislation being drafted in committee. It's not being voted on, on the floor by either Chamber of Congress at the moment. From what we've heard, we would expect to see more versions of these before. There's a bill that would go to the floor and either the House or the Senate will likely originate in the house because that's where the committee that oversees it is. there are different. Aspects of the program that are currently up for debate. One of the pros of this being reauthorized every three years is it's kind of a forced reevaluation of what's working and what's not working in the program, right? So some of the things that are on the table, like one that you mentioned is, is the program going to become permanent?
Does it no longer require reauthorization? And then there's other ones that we can get into that would affect eligibility of businesses that have foreign ownership, eligibility of businesses to continue to bid if they've won before the things like that.
Lori-Lee: Yeah, that makes sense. They've been pushing for a while to make the SBIR program permanent so they don't have to do these reauthorizations every three years. But, so far that hasn't happened.
Given that we lived through this before, what happened last time?
Sofia: we've lived through this once, so we first got introduced to the SBIR program in 2020. We were awarded our first contract in 2021. I. And then reauthorization. This past cycle happened in the fall of 22. It was a bit of a cliffhanger for us. There were a couple things we noticed as we approached the reauthorization, and then in the couple months that followed, that affected us as a company that was a increase in the number of topics that did not end up issuing any awards.
This can always happen, right? You can always go after a topic. And then funding prioritization can change on the side of the agency. And even though they received qualified bids or qualified proposals, they could still decide not to fund the topic. So we saw that happen at a higher rate, and then there was a bit of a cliffhanger with a small. of lapse in the program,, where we really weren't hearing anything for a while because it was uncertain whether or not it was going to get reauthorized. And then we heard back on some proposals really late. Generally you hear within 90 days. And I think there was one that we weren't notified until more than six months after we had submitted the proposal. The other thing that came out of it that didn't affect us but could have is in the last round of SBIR reauthorization, there were changes made to eligibility for awardees. We were not impacted because we are a bootstrapped 100% US owned with all offices and all employees. Being US residents, there were some additional restrictions that were added in the 2022 reauthorization cycle that made it harder for startups that had taken VC money. Particularly if the founders no longer held a majority of the business or if the VC firms had foreign ties. Eligibility requirements come up every reauthorization cycle, and they have been getting tighter . I think the eligibility requirements are a factor that some companies need to keep in mind.
Lori-Lee: Absolutely. So the September 30th deadline came and went, and the program still hadn't been renewed, which caused a lot of scrambling on the small business side because there were lots of small businesses that rely.
On SBIR contracts to survive. We were in a situation where we were not dependent on that. So while it was annoying for us, we weren't, you know, we weren't scrambling too much. . We had awards that we had won, but they would not go into contracting until the program was reauthorized, even though that funding had already been allocated, which is from the year before.
Which is why I wanted to talk about this or talk about that point. Just because you're bidding on something that has financial year 25 funding, which has already been allocated, doesn't mean that you'll get it. They held it back last week, authorization, and I'm sure they'll do it again this time if it's delayed.
Sofia: It didn't affect any of our contracts that were in performance. But like you said, we did have delays on both the award and the contracting side.
Lori-Lee: Yes, so the question. Everyone is asking, and everyone's trying to figure out is, should you apply for an SBIR or STTR? Right now, given that reauthorization is on the horizon, what are the pros? What are the cons? What should you consider?
Sofia: We've been debating this internally basically since late last year. we have a lot of opinions. What do you think is the biggest reason a company should not bid?
Lori-Lee: To put together an SBIR or an STTR proposal, even for a phase one is a lot of time and a lot of money. And given that reauthorization is up in the air and we don't know if the program's gonna continue, I am really hesitant to spend more time working on proposals that might not go anywhere, and instead taking that time and investing it into.
Something else. Either looking at phase three contracts outside of the SBIR program to work with the government, or just devoting more time to commercial sector pursuits. I am also a bit of a doomsayer and like to plan for the worst. So my type A, doomsday prepper is like, yeah, the program's done. It's not gonna get reauthorized.
Sofia: If it does, it'll take forever. There'll gonna be a big lapse. Yeah.
Lori-Lee: It's curtains for the program and, you know, whether that is evidence backed or not, that's what I'm afraid of. I am pretty hesitant to keep spending hours on bids unless it's a crystal clear, perfect fit for the business.
But, what do you think?
Sofia: I think the overarching argument that's on the dramatically opposite side of yours of like the curtain is that historically I. It has been reauthorized every time since Reagan put it into place, it's always hotly contested and there's always a lot of debate over the funding levels.
And yes, the program has transformed and the priorities that it funds, it has transformed every single time, but the likelihood is high, given the strong economic output, given the support across multiple industries that it is going to continue. form it will continue in is very difficult assess. The other argument I would say, for to stay on your siber cycle of watching the topics, asking the pre-release questions, doing all the things, is that there is one that is a great fit for your business, it's strongly aligned to your current capabilities. It's strongly aligned to a current product you have that maybe just needs to be adapted for the agency if you don't win it, and it does get awarded. It's going to one of your competitors. That is the thing that always hangs up me on some of these topics is that I am, by taking myself out of the race, I'm giving one of our competitors the opportunity to gain a new customer, gain additional funding, gain additional context and feedback through the program that we don't get. And that's a very hard thing for me to. Like say no to, I don't know if it's like a very weird version of like founder fomo, but like I definitely sense it when I read certain topics and I'm like, oh, like I have an idea of the set of companies that I think would go after something like this. And I'm like, oh, but I don't want to continue to advance in this space that we're trying to advance with this new agency or this new customer. I think the answer is that the devil's in the details. And there's probably a middle ground, but like the, the, the yank back that I have from the, like, oh, the curtain is closing on it is like, probably isn't. And I don't want the money to go to my competitors.
Lori-Lee: Yeah, so I guess that's the test is if you see a topic that is a really good fit for your business and you would be mad if it was awarded to a competitor. Then I guess you still have to go after it, even though the program could disappear. And the, the factors that we didn't have last time, there wasn't, doge wasn't happening in 2022 and there wasn't project 2025, which doesn't directly reference ser, but like sort of does.
Those weren't factors before, you have those kind of criteria, is it something that is a perfect fit for my business and would I be mad if a competitor wanted? If you check those two boxes, then you know, you get to pass, go and submit an application or submit a proposal.
But I still think in doing so, you should spend as little time possible to put together a quality proposal so that you can still focus on other things. , It's a gamble, it's a risk, but it's maybe a little more calculated. And we have spoken a ton in past episodes and on, on our, on the podcast about how you can, be more efficient in your.
Proposal writing, using ai, using templates, using calculators, things like that. So that you aren't spending more time than absolutely necessary to put together a quality proposal. And I think those things all stay true.
Sofia: I think for startups in 2025 that are considering, do I bid on an SBIR or an STTR? Get ruthless with your bid or no bid criteria. I. Have a really clear list of what makes a solicitation a good fit for your company. And it needs to be, yes, no, and you need to be able to rank or solicitations against something that your whole kind of leadership team can agree on. And then second, when you do find a solicitation that you're like, yes, I would be super disappointed if the program survived this. Were awarded to a competitor, then. do you time box the proposal into the smallest possible box in with the smallest number of people in your business affected by it so that you can keep your work that is related to non CER revenue channels going without being slowed down by the effort.
That is what we know is A, is a, it's a pretty cumbersome effort to get even a small solicitation together sometimes.
Lori-Lee: Yeah, even those little, those 10 page. J phase ones, they still sink a lot of hours. Like that's at least three days full time.
Sofia: Yeah, I don't think we've ever been able to do it less than that. And we did break down in another episode all the ways. That we use ai, which is not something we had at our disposal in 2022 when we were trying to decide do we bid? Do we not bid? How much time and money do we invest into each one of these proposals? So startups in 2025 that are reconsidering whether or not they bid on an SBIR or an STTR do have. New productivity tools at their advantage, particularly if it's a company that's bid and won before you have documents that, you know, work that you can use as templates. And if you don't have templates, we have ours. But there, there are options to make as compressed of a timeline as you can.
We referenced getting ruthless about bid or no bid, and I think
Lori-Lee: mm-hmm.
Sofia: led this for our team is what questions should leadership teams be asking themselves that would help them create kind of their rubric? bid or no bid
Lori-Lee: off the top of my head, you know, when I'm going through the solicitation topics, I look at, you know, is there something. In this list that we already have the technology for, that we've already developed in-house that can be applied to solve the problem that the topic owner is talking about.
So, can we adapt what we already have to meet this need if we can? That's something that'll kind of go to the top of the list. If, the other thing that I look for on the, you know, bid, no bid is if they're asking for a capability that. We don't currently have, but would augment and improve our current technology offering and our current IP portfolio.
So something that, benefits the government because they get a new piece of tech and it benefits us because we get to expand on what we already have in a logical way. We're not just gonna try to randomly bolt on, a random piece to our business, it has to make sense.
The other thing I look for in the bid, no bid is if it's shaped. So you can tell when you look at some of these proposals that the topic owner has already found a startup or a firm that they want to deliver the work.
And there's lots of very specific language in there to kind of indicate that. This can realistically only go to one company that's gonna check all of these boxes. So if it looks like it's shaped, it doesn't mean we won't bid on it, but it goes, it gets bumped down in priority because there's a lower chance that, that we would win as a new entrant, even though that's not how the program is supposed to be used.
The last thing I look for in determining whether we should bid or not on an SBIR topic is how pie in the sky the ask is. A lot of these topics are asking for a lot on very little budget, and you can tell sometimes that, you know, they.
They have a requirement that they're trying to meet and they don't have funding anywhere else. So they've gone to the SBIR program to get a capability funded, we've seen a lot of topics out there that are like, we need you to build a sensor that is gonna go into space.
And be in orbit. And also we need this for under a million dollars. And, yeah, I mean, if you happen to have that sitting in your garage and you just need to like launch it, like maybe, maybe you could do that. , The idea of this being r and d is, it's supposed to be fairly greenfield, maybe a commercial adaptation to, you know, kind of make it fit for military or, or whatever branch of the federal government you're dealing with.
The, the final factor in evaluating a a SBIR topic is how delusional is it? And it's okay. It's allowed to be a little delusional. We're pushing the envelope here, so you're, you have to expect a certain level of d Lulu, but if something is like that is just, there's no way that we could succeed in this.
Even if we proposed it like this would bankrupt us or we wouldn't be able to deliver in the timeline, then that one will fall off the list. And once you've looked at these. Topics enough. You will, you will a hundred percent know what I'm talking about when you come across one of these and you're like, you're asking for what now? For how many dollars? And I get taxed on that.
Sofia: Those can be tough to read. It's a, but you're right. It's a good litmus test to use when you're trying to decide, is this worth my time and energy to go build out a proposal for.
Lori-Lee: And luckily every cycle there's usually quite a few topics. So you have, you know, a lot that you can go through and a lot to draw on. I know people like have different tools to scrape dsip and scrape sam.gov to, to try to pull up different topics, but you know, sometimes the, the applicable ones, you can't tell from the title that it's a good fit for your business. So you really do have to read each one at least a little to see if there's something in there, that's applicable to you.
Sofia: Hopefully some of these considerations that we've had within our business will help other people decide to.
Lori-Lee: And maybe just be a little bit more optimistic than I am, but thanks for joining and be sure to check out this episode if you haven't already, and we'll see you next time. Bye.
