Sbir MCP server

SBIR — Small Business Innovation Research Awards

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program data. Federal R&D awards to small businesses across NIH, DoD, NSF, NASA, DOE, and other agencies. ~$5B/year flowing to small companies for early-stage research. Free, no auth.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1679+ live data sources.

Why this matters for AI agents

For researching small-business tech innovation, federal R&D priorities, or "who's getting funded for X technology?" SBIR is the source. Different from USAspending (which has the same data plus all other federal awards) — SBIR is curated, smaller, easier to search for early-stage R&D specifically.

Common flows:

• Award search. "AI / cybersecurity / clean energy SBIR awards?" → keyword search.
• Company history. "What has X received in SBIR funding?" → company-level search.
• Agency portfolio. "What's NASA funding under SBIR?" → agency filter.
• Phase tracking. Phase I (proof of concept, ~$250k), Phase II (development, ~$1M+), Phase III (commercialization).

Auth

None. SBIR.gov is fully public.

Award structure

A Phase II award means the Phase I succeeded enough that an agency wants to invest more. Phase III means the technology graduated to procurement or larger contracts.

Participating agencies

11 federal agencies have SBIR programs: DoD, HHS (NIH), NASA, NSF, DOE, USDA, EPA, DHS, DOT, ED, NIST.

DoD and NIH together account for ~70% of SBIR/STTR dollars. Each agency has different priorities (DoD: defense tech; NIH: biomedical; NASA: space tech; NSF: foundational research).

Common pitfalls

• STTR vs SBIR. Both are Small Business set-asides. STTR (Technology Transfer) requires a research-institution partner; SBIR doesn't. Funding is similar.
• Topic codes vary by agency. DoD has detailed topic codes (specific defense problems); NIH uses broader project topics. Cross-agency comparison by "topic" is messy.
• Phase III isn't an SBIR award. It's commercialization-track funding from other sources. Don't expect to find Phase III dollar figures in SBIR data.
• Award dates lag. Awards appear publicly after legal cure periods. Recent quarters may be incomplete.
• Sole proprietorship to acquisition pathways. Successful SBIR companies often get acquired before commercialization. The award history doesn't always tell you what happened to the technology after Phase II — track the company separately via SEC EDGAR if it went public.
• Small business definition. SBIR-eligible companies are <500 employees AND meet other size standards. Some "small" companies get acquired after winning Phase I; eligibility is checked at the time of award.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sbir": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/sbir/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/sbir/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — askpipeworx, discovertools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.