Dayton-area small businesses and technology to see boost from federal innovation grants

Small Business Innovation Research and Small Technology Transfer grants expired September 30, 2025, the end of the last federal government fiscal year.

In 2024, some 230 of the awards, for $156 million, went to Ohio companies. Of those, 122 awards — north of $89 million — went to Dayton-area firms, said Mike McCann, chief operating officer of The Entrepreneurs Center in Dayton.

Even with the program going dark last September, Dayton-area companies still landed more than $61 million of the grants in 2025, according to figures from the Entrepreneurs Center.

“The passage of this reauthorization by the House is an important milestone for a program that is vital to national security and local interests,” said Scott Koorndyk, president and chief executive of the center. “We are hopeful that this will be quickly followed by this bill becoming law”.

In the last three years, Dayton-area companies attracted “more than half of all SBIR/STTR funds that land in Ohio,” he added.

Chris Hemmelgarn, chief technology officer for Miamisburg’s CRG Defense, welcomed the House passage.

“Having the SBIR program reauthorized is an exciting and much needed step in protecting the small business innovation ecosystem throughout the United States,” Hemmelgarn said in an email.

“The reauthorization of the SBIR and STTR programs is a critical win for the small businesses that drive American innovation,” House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chairman Brian Babin, R-Texas, and fellow committee members said in a joint statement.

The program has seen changes.

A new Phase II mechanism allows awards up to $30 million for “strategic breakthroughs,” according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis of the legislation.

The law also requires that agencies cap the number of proposals a small business can submit to the programs on a per-fiscal-year, per-solicitation or per-topic basis.

“Translation: the SBIR mills, companies that have raised $75M+ purely through SBIR, just got put on notice. The era of volume-spray proposal shops is closing,” venture capitalist Heath Naquin said on LinkedIn.