SSTI Digest

A recent executive order from the White House aims to centralize federal grantmaking. This revamping of the grantmaking process would affect how decisions are made regarding the distribution of billions of dollars in research grants and have a significant impact on research universities.  While the order notes, “nothing in this order shall be construed to discourage or prevent the use of peer review methods,” it sidelines the peer review process with the disclaimer, “provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory” to the senior appointees. These senior appointees are directed to “use their independent judgment.”  All final grant award decisions across all agencies are to be made by political appointees. 

The U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) recently notified the FY24 Build to Scale (B2S) competition applicants that it has canceled the FY24 competition and will announce a new B2S competition in early 2026. According to the announcement, Secretary Lutnick has directed EDA to restart a new B2S competition that better aligns with the goals of the current administration. …

After eliminating funding for many energy projects underway totaling several billions of dollars, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) states its intention to make new awards from a pool of $1 billion exclusively focused on projects to advance and scale mining, processing, and manufacturing technologies across key stages of the critical minerals and materials supply chains. The Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) are not open yet for four of the five programs; awards for the fifth will be announced this fall. The advance notice for planned NOFOs is to give potential applicants extra time to consider the design and structure of their potential proposals.  …

The dominance of artificial intelligence (AI) investments in venture capital (VC) has been a consistent storyline in the first half of 2025. PitchBook, Carta, Crunchbase, and many others have all pointed to the significant portion of investment dollars and deals flowing to AI companies. With the volume of companies, deals, and dollars involved, it is more than a spike in the usual cyclic nature of  VC investment.   As SSTI wrote in our review of Q1 venture capital investment activity, VC has been concentrating in larger deals. With market trends and mega deals in AI so well documented, we explore investment concentration from  deal size and geographic perspectives. As with prior analyses, we focus on deal sizes more relevant to TBED initiatives to help regional innovation leaders identify where they might find opportunities, face challenges, or set priorities in such a dynamic environment. Excluding the largest deals from our analysis appears to be increasing important, considering  PitchBook’s findings that just ten companies accounted for 41% of all venture dollars so far this year.  

Despite a decades-long decline in its share of American jobs, manufacturing remains a foundational part of the U.S. economy as the third largest contributor to its gross domestic product (GDP). Despite the sector’s share of overall U.S. employment declining over time, manufacturing continues to anchor many local economies. In this edition of Useful Stats, SSTI unveils trends shaping the manufacturing landscape, from areas of sustained growth to places undergoing structural change, by examining employment and establishment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) at the county level.  Data at the two- and three-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) level…

States have spent millions annually on training grants aimed at upskilling workers and strengthening their business climate. But who has benefited from these investments?   A new NBER working paper, "Do Workforce Development Programs Bridge the Skills Gap," provides a broad-based evaluation of these…

The White House  AI action plan, “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” released on July 23, 2025, identifies over 90 Federal policy actions to be taken across three pillars—Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security.  …

NSF’s Regional Resilience Innovation Incubator (R2I2) project has awarded Phase 1 funding to six teams, each addressing specific regional climate challenges and demonstrating solutions. The award includes funding for a seventh team to create the R2I2 National Office, which will support the collective and coordinated implementation of R2I2 award activities.

In perhaps the most difficult budget season of the last 25 years, where the President’s budget has proposed eliminating funding for scores of programs, both the House and Senate subcommittees with budget oversight for the Economic Development Administration (EDA) have proposed continuation funding of $50 million for FY2026 for the popular Build 2 Scale (B2S) program—referred to as the Regional Innovation Program Grants in budget language. B2S is one of three key funding priorities for SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council (IAC). Under IAC’s coordination, dozens of organizations weighed in with their members of Congress to explain the importance of the program and asked them to support it. This direct communication has taken the program from authorization but no funding to $50 million per year. While a relatively small amount of money, B2S is the largest federal pool of competitive funding to support individual, regionally designed innovation initiatives across the country.

House and Senate subcommittees with oversight for Commerce, State and Justice appropriations differ on funding recommendations for the EDA Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program, commonly referred to as Tech Hubs. While any funding in a tight budget environment is good, the $50 million in the House version of the CJS bill or the Senate subcommittee’s $60 million is far short of Congress’s original vision for the Tech Hubs, authorized at $10 billion over ten years. Congress provided EDA $500 million in FY2025 for new Tech Hubs.

The Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) subcommittee of House Appropriations has turned against the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership in its budget recommendations for the Small Business Administration, zeroing out the only program that provides funds to help states level the competitive field of applicants for the SBIR/STTR program. While the FAST funds were decreased from the $9 million enacted in FY2024, the SBDC line item received a $10 million increase in the FSGG appropriations proposal. The corresponding Senate subcommittee has not taken any action yet regarding FAST. SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council (IAC) is working to protect the funding in the Senate bill and in the final conference bill. Broadening the distribution of SBIR awards nationally is a priority within SBIR reauthorization bills under consideration in both chambers of Congress.

The nearly status quo nature of the FY 2026 budget of $9.0 billion for the National Science Foundation advanced by the Senate Appropriations Committee stands in striking contrast to the Administration’s $3.9 billion request. House appropriations, meanwhile, appropriated $7.0 billion for NSF, a reduction of $2.06 billion or 23% from the FY 2025 enacted level. The fate of the popular Regional Innovation Engines program, as well as NSF’s entire R&D funding portfolio, remains in play for a future conference bill.