NSF to Issue Large, ‘Flexible’ Grants to Nontraditional Teams

Last week, the National Science Foundation announced plans to award large, multi-year grants to a few teams “operating outside of existing academic, start-up, and industry constraints.” Each award under the Tech Labs initiative will be significantly larger than the average NSF award, ranging from $10 million to $50 million per year and running for at least four years.

“Tech Labs recognizes that there are certain high-risk, high-reward technical problems that require more flexibility and focused resourcing than traditional institutions can often provide,” said Erwin Gianchandani, the head of NSF’s Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate, at a webinar this week discussing NSF’s accompanying request for information.

The initiative will support teams that “move beyond traditional research outputs,” such as publications and datasets, and instead aim to “transition critical technology from early concept or prototypes to commercially viable platforms,” NSF’s announcement states. In the webinar, Gianchandani pointed to the internet and polymerase chain reaction as examples of “novel platform technologies” that the initiative aims to build.

NSF said it will select around three topic areas “in which the U.S. must retain or regain technical dominance,” possibly including quantum technology, AI, critical materials, semiconductor manufacturing, and biotechnology. The agency will select two to four teams per topic for an initial nine-month phase and then choose one to two teams per topic to execute their proposals, said Rebecca Chmiel, associate program director for emerging technologies. After that, teams might transition away from NSF funding or into the “companion” NSF Tech Accelerators Initiative that will focus on projects at a later stage of technology readiness, Chmiel added. NSF plans to officially announce the Tech Accelerators Initiative in the coming weeks.

The Tech Labs awards will be funded as Other Transaction (OT) contracts, so they are not subject to NSF’s uniform guidance like other NSF awards, which Chmiel said will “allow for greater flexibility, operational autonomy, and reduced administrative burden.”

In the webinar, NSF staff highlighted that all Tech Lab researchers must be full-time after the initial nine-month phase, which they noted could be achieved by reimbursing the researcher’s employer for their salary and benefits.

“I’ve been really inspired by watching some of the startups that we’re interacting with around TIP. The startup culture is often… quite intense and quite dedicated to the mission that they’re looking to accelerate,” Chmiel said. “I think that’s the type of employment that we’re looking for for the different key personnel of the teams. But there is going to be quite a bit of flexibility in exactly what that means,” she added. NSF staff also said the initiative is not limited to “very established scientists.”

NSF intends to issue a solicitation for the Tech Labs in the spring of 2026 and expects to select teams in the first half of 2026. Responses to the RFI are due by Jan. 20, and NSF will host a second webinar on Jan. 14.

A new model for federal grants

The idea of “flexible block grants” to support team-based science outside a traditional university structure has been “bubbling up in the ecosystem for a little bit,” said Caleb Watney, co-founder of the Institute for Progress think tank. In August, Watney published a proposal for 25 federally funded “X-Labs,” which would be independent research organizations receiving between $10 million and $50 million per year for seven years for “team-based, exploratory, and infrastructure-heavy work” in AI for science.

Watney said both the size of the Tech Lab awards and their flexibility are “key” to funding large research centers that allow researchers to “really be able to push out the limits and not worry, every twist in the road, like, ‘Oh, do I need to go back to the NIH and ask for additional flexibility on this,’ or… that constant rat race of thinking about your next grant a year or two away, I think could really end up warping the incentives of scientists to work on more short-term, incremental projects.”

“I would love to see these models be applied to more blue sky, basic research,” Watney added.

Watney noted some potential challenges with the Tech Labs model, including a greater need to “bet on the right team” when awarding a large grant, and navigating oversight of the team while “giving them space to do their thing.”

“It’s not a true experiment unless there’s some way for the thing to fail,” he added. “And I think the NSF is very amenable to viewing this like an experiment and trying to generate data during the process to figure out, ‘How is this doing? Are we seeing better results here than we would have expected from a traditional set of grants?’”