TopicScout Research · 2026-05-23

Where SBIR concentration actually lives

Repeat-winner concentration in the SBIR/STTR program, 2014–2023 — and what the April 13, 2026 reauthorization will (and won't) shift.

TL;DR. At the agency level, the SBIR program is not as concentrated as the "SBIR mill" critique suggests: DoD's top 10 Phase I winners share 11.2% of its Phase I awards over the last decade; NSF's top 10 share is under 1%. Concentration shows up one level down — inside specific topic families, where the same firms repeatedly win. NASA's largest mission directorates send 72.2% of awards to firms with 3+ prior wins in the same family. The reauthorization's new per-firm annual caps (50 Phase I / 20 Phase II) would have displaced only 55 awards across the entire 10-year window — all at DoD, all from four firms. The caps target a phenomenon the data only weakly shows.

Methodology

Data source: the official SBIR.gov bulk award extract, restricted to fiscal years 2014–2023 — the last full decade available, covering the post-2014 reauthorization regime through to the most recent complete year in the public file.

Firm names are normalized by stripping standard corporate suffixes (Inc, LLC, Corp, Co, Ltd) and whitespace before comparison, which collapses common near-duplicates ("Acme Inc." and "Acme Corporation") but does not deduplicate genuine name changes or subsidiaries.

Topic families are derived from the SBIR.gov Topic Code field, taking the leading agency prefix (e.g. AF241-001 → AF, NIH-NIAID-24-001 → NIH). Families with fewer than 50 awards in the window are excluded from the concentration tables — HHI is too noisy below that.

Sample window covers 61,685 awards from the 207,731-row bulk file (older awards filtered out). Replication code: scripts/research/topicscout/compute_repeat_winner_concentration.py.

1. Agency-level concentration is modest

Aggregating across all topic families inside each agency, the top-10 firms capture between 0.7% (NSF) and 12.1% (Commerce) of Phase I awards. DoD — the headline SBIR program — sends about 11% of Phase I dollars to its top 10 firms, across a base of 5,500+ distinct winners.

Agency	Phase I awards	Distinct firms	Top-10 firm share
DoD	17,702	5,520	11.2%
HHS	9,375	5,002	3.3%
DOE	3,775	1,519	10.3%
NASA	3,671	1,253	8.8%
NSF	3,229	3,234	0.7%
USDA	800	646	7.9%
DOC	355	299	12.1%

That is concentration, but it is not what the press shorthand "SBIR mills" implies — most agency programs have a long tail of one- and two-award firms doing the bulk of the work.

DoD — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Physical Optics	273	1.5%
2	Triton Systems	272	1.5%
3	Intelligent Automation	256	1.4%
4	Physical Sciences	222	1.3%
5	Charles River Analytics	204	1.2%
6	Lynntech	172	1.0%
7	Creare	151	0.9%
8	Luna Innovations	147	0.8%
9	Toyon Research	144	0.8%
10	CFD Research	135	0.8%

HHS — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Physical Sciences	46	0.5%
2	Lynntech	35	0.4%
3	Minnesota Healthsolutions	33	0.4%
4	Electronic Biosciences	31	0.3%
5	Epicypher	31	0.3%
6	Celdara Medical	27	0.3%
7	Microbiotix	27	0.3%
8	Giner	25	0.3%
9	Larix Bioscience	25	0.3%
10	Affinergy	25	0.3%

DOE — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Radiation Monitoring Devices	75	2.0%
2	Radiabeam Technologies	47	1.2%
3	TDA Research	44	1.2%
4	Physical Sciences	40	1.1%
5	Radiasoft	35	0.9%
6	Luna Innovations	33	0.9%
7	Radiabeam Systems	30	0.8%
8	Mainstream Engineering	29	0.8%
9	Tech-X	29	0.8%
10	Advanced Cooling Technologies	27	0.7%

NASA — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	CFD Research	47	1.3%
2	Creare	47	1.3%
3	Nanosonic	36	1.0%
4	Cornerstone Research Group	31	0.8%
5	Physical Sciences	30	0.8%
6	Advanced Cooling Technologies	27	0.7%
7	TDA Research	27	0.7%
8	Alphacore	26	0.7%
9	Traclabs	26	0.7%
10	Freedom Photonics	26	0.7%

NSF — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Farmsense	3	0.1%
2	Secure Food Solutions	3	0.1%
3	Kepley Biosystems	3	0.1%
4	Smartbot360	3	0.1%
5	Alchemie Solutions	2	0.1%
6	Astek Diagnostics	2	0.1%
7	National Resource Consultants	2	0.1%
8	Nitrate Elimination	2	0.1%
9	Pensievision	2	0.1%
10	Sentire Medical Systems	2	0.1%

USDA — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Isca Technologies	17	2.1%
2	Intelligent Optical Systems	6	0.8%
3	TDA Research	6	0.8%
4	Giner	6	0.8%
5	Compact Membrane Systems	6	0.8%
6	Ocean Era	5	0.6%
7	Application Insight	5	0.6%
8	Astalake Biosystems	4	0.5%
9	Geo-Spider	4	0.5%
10	Guild Associates	4	0.5%

DOC — top 10 Phase I winners

#	Firm	Phase I awards (2014–2023)	Share of agency Phase I
1	Aerodyne Research	8	2.3%
2	Creare	7	2.0%
3	Toyon Research	5	1.4%
4	CFD Research	4	1.1%
5	Synthetik Applied Technologies	4	1.1%
6	Coastaloceanvision	3	0.8%
7	Arete Associates	3	0.8%
8	Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Associates	3	0.8%
9	Infobeyond Technology	3	0.8%
10	Nikira Labs	3	0.8%

2. Topic-family concentration is where the action is

Look one level down — inside specific topic families — and the picture inverts. The same firms repeatedly win the same kinds of work. Across NASA's mission directorates, 60–72% of Phase I awards in each major family go to firms with 3 or more prior wins in that same family.

The headline measure is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), the standard antitrust concentration metric: the sum of squared firm shares, scaled to 10,000. The DOJ treats HHI above 1,500 as "moderately concentrated" and above 2,500 as "highly concentrated." SBIR topic families don't reach those antitrust thresholds, but the repeat-winner share — what fraction of each family's awards go to firms with 3+ prior wins — runs as high as the 70% range in NASA's main program areas.

NASA — most concentrated topic families

Family	Awards	Distinct firms	HHI	Top firm	Share to repeat winners (≥3 awards)
`A`	841	257	109	Mosaic ATM (3.8%)	72.1%
`T`	724	296	68	CFD Research (3.0%)	62.6%
`Z`	871	343	59	CFD Research (2.2%)	62.6%
`H`	1,165	443	46	TDA Research (2.0%)	62.8%
`S`	1,609	512	45	Creare (2.2%)	72.2%

DoD — most concentrated topic families

Family	Awards	Distinct firms	HHI	Top firm	Share to repeat winners (≥3 awards)
`NON`	59	49	290	Physical Sciences (10.2%)	15.3%
`NGA`	156	69	277	Intelligent Automation (9.0%)	53.2%
`SCO`	60	48	250	Soar Technology (6.7%)	6.7%
`DMEA`	100	59	232	Physical Optics (7.0%)	32.0%
`SF`	100	75	218	Physical Sciences (9.0%)	22.0%
`DHA`	515	171	217	Triton Systems (10.5%)	65.8%
`ST`	105	63	193	Stottler Henke Associates (3.8%)	24.8%
`CBD`	298	121	142	CFD Research (3.7%)	53.4%
`DTRA`	308	142	137	Radiation Monitoring Devices (6.5%)	50.3%
`DHP`	315	137	134	Triton Systems (3.8%)	53.7%

HHS — most concentrated topic families

Family	Awards	Distinct firms	HHI	Top firm	Share to repeat winners (≥3 awards)
`NIMHD`	61	40	459	ISA Associates (14.8%)	36.1%
`ODCDC`	55	37	373	Luna Innovations (7.3%)	32.7%
`FDA`	52	36	369	En Solucion (7.7%)	26.9%
`NIDILRR`	57	37	341	Createability Concepts (7.0%)	28.1%
`N/A`	57	42	323	Touch Graphics (8.8%)	24.6%
`113`	51	41	296	Litron Laboratories (5.9%)	17.6%
`500`	94	59	242	Teachley (6.4%)	23.4%
`172`	181	92	228	Electronic Biosciences (9.4%)	47.5%
`600`	73	58	200	Transcendent International (4.1%)	8.2%
`NIDCD`	157	88	174	Altec (4.5%)	38.9%

DOE — most concentrated topic families

Family	Awards	Distinct firms	HHI	Top firm	Share to repeat winners (≥3 awards)
`DE`	55	24	466	N5 Sensors (5.5%)	65.5%
`1`	57	24	440	Global Bamboo Technologies (5.3%)	52.6%
`N/A`	54	25	418	Advanced Cooling Technologies (5.6%)	27.8%
`06A`	54	33	418	Radiation Monitoring Devices (9.3%)	38.9%
`01A`	52	34	414	Reservoir Labs (11.5%)	23.1%
`02B`	50	31	408	Reservoir Labs (10.0%)	16.0%
`14A`	52	31	406	Radiation Monitoring Devices (7.7%)	26.9%
`07A`	50	35	392	Radiabeam Technologies (10.0%)	28.0%
`18A`	50	35	376	Advanced Cooling Technologies (10.0%)	16.0%
`01B`	52	35	355	Princeton Optronics (7.7%)	19.2%

3. The April 13, 2026 reauth caps barely move the needle

The SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act signed April 13, 2026 introduced per-firm annual caps: 50 Phase I awards and 20 Phase II awards per firm per year. Applied retroactively to the 2014–2023 window:

Applied to 2014–2023 SBIR/STTR Phase I and Phase II awards: 55 awards (0.1%) would have been displaced if the new per-firm annual caps (50 Phase I / 20 Phase II) had been in force.

Across the full 61,685-award window, only 4 firms ever exceeded the new cap in any single year.

Agency	Awards displaced (cumulative, 10 yrs)
DoD	55

Firms that would have been clipped

Firm	Excess awards (10 yrs)
Physical Optics	38
Physical Sciences	14
Intelligent Automation	2
Creare	1

Two readings of this:

The cap level is set at a threshold almost no firm has ever approached. Even the top-10 DoD firms average ~25 Phase I awards per year at their peak — half the new cap.
If the policy intent is to redistribute work away from "repeat winners," the binding constraint isn't firm-level annual throughput; it's topic-family concentration. A firm that wins three awards in NASA topic H in one year hasn't hit the new cap, but it has captured a meaningful share of that family.

A cap calibrated to family-level concentration — e.g. capping any one firm at N% of a topic family's annual awards — would have more bite than the current per-firm annual ceiling.

About this analysis

TopicScout is a tool that pulls every open SBIR/STTR topic each week and ranks them against a firm's capability statement, so founders skip the manual crawl. We sit on the same SBIR.gov bulk extract used for this analysis, plus the live agency open-topic feeds.

Questions, requests for additional cuts, or interested in the underlying CSV? Email jcavallo@alumni.colgate.edu.