Top Artificial Intelligence/ML SBIR/STTR Winners

What this leaderboard measures

The SBIR/STTR Award Winner Leaderboard ranks the small businesses that have won the most federal Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer funding, measured by total award dollars on record. The default view shows the top 50 firms across every agency and technology area we track; the filtered views narrow the same ranking to a single agency, technology domain, program phase, or award year. Every figure on this page — dollar totals, award counts, the share held by the largest winners — is computed directly from public federal award records. Nothing is modeled, projected, or estimated.

How to read the rankings

Each row is one recipient firm. Total $ awarded sums the reported obligation amounts across all of that firm's awards in the current view, and Awards counts how many distinct awards make up that total. The top agency and top technology columns show where a firm concentrates its work, and most recent is the latest award year we have on file. You can re-sort the table by total dollars (the default, which rewards a few large awards) or by award count (which rewards firms that win frequently). The two orderings often surface different companies, which is itself a useful signal about how a firm wins.

Data sources & caveats

The leaderboard is derived from public data — primarily federal award records from USASpending.gov and SBIR.gov. It reflects the awards we have ingested and the dollars reported on them, so it is directional rather than exhaustive: an absent firm may simply have records we have not loaded, and reported obligation amounts can lag or be revised. Where a recipient name, dollar figure, or year is missing, we omit it rather than guess. Firm names are matched as reported, so a company that appears under multiple spellings may be split across rows. Treat the ranking as a fast, honest read on who is winning, not as an audited accounting of every dollar.

Why award concentration matters

One of the most useful things a leaderboard reveals is concentration: how much of the available funding flows to a small group of repeat winners. In this view, the top 25 firms account for 68.8% of all SBIR/STTR dollars on record. For a firm deciding where to compete, that number frames the opportunity: highly concentrated areas reward incumbency and past performance, while less concentrated areas can be easier for a newer entrant to break into. Pair this page with the per-agency and per-technology profiles to see where the competitive field is widest.

Turn the leaderboard into your next award

Seeing who wins is the first step; the next is finding the topics that fit your company. Run your capability statement through the free capability matcher to rank open SBIR/STTR/WERX topics by fit, and use the free readiness scorecard to gauge how competitive you are before you bid. Browse open opportunities by deadline, and explore agency profiles and technology areas to understand the funders behind the names on this board.