Since 1982, the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) has helped cutting edge small businesses turn great ideas into great products, funding the early ideas considered too risky for most VCs, and keeping American business at the cutting edge. To celebrate SBIR’s 44th birthday on July 22, here are five of the top SBIR success stories.
Symantec: Language Processing Startup to Cybersecurity Titan
Before SBIR was officially established, the National Science Foundation piloted the program, starting in 1977. In 1979, a company called Machine Intelligence Corporation received a $25,000 Phase 1 research grant from the pilot. The goal was to develop a more efficient program to sort words alphabetically — a feat that could only be performed on top-of-the-line super computers at the time.
The project got good results and a Phase II grant of $220,000, driving MIC to create some important early developments, including the first commercial machine vision system, before they went bankrupt in 1982. However, MIC’s Dr. Gary Hendrix and his team used the remaining SBIR funds to create the Symantec Corporation, now known as Gen Digital. The team was able to use their expertise in natural language database queries to build innovative word processing tools and utilities.
The company went through many products and configurations before ultimately becoming the cybersecurity titan they’re known as today, making innovations across the software landscape, all because of that first SBIR fund injection.
Genzyme Pioneers Treatments of Rare Genetic Diseases
Genzyme was founded in 1981 in the top of an old clothing warehouse in Boston’s Chinatown. The company began making enzymes for diagnostic testing, with the help of some early venture funding. They received a $62,000 SBIR Grant in 1983 to develop a method for large-scale enzyme manufacture to treat a genetic condition called Gaucher’s disease. Gaucher’s sufferers lack an enzyme called glucocerebrosidase. Without the enzyme, patients develop fatty deposits on organs, leading to swollen livers and spleens, pain and, in some cases, death.
When they started, the only source for glucocerebrosidase was human placentas, and there simply wasn’t enough to treat the thousands of sufferers. Genzyme’s approach was revolutionary: they inserted human genes into animal cells, and grew those cells in bioreactors to produce much greater outputs of the enzyme. It took seven years and seven separate SBIR grants, but eventually Genzyme was able to produce Ceredase, the first successful Gaucher’s treatment.
This spawned a whole new approach to treatment, with Genzyme developing enzymes for other rare genetic conditions, using the techniques they’d developed for Gaucher’s. In the process, it became the third largest biotech company in the world, before being acquired by Sanofi in 2022.
CDMA: Making Modern Wireless Possible
In 1985, the wireless industry was in trouble. As adoption continued to grow, the analog cellular network was running out of room on the radio spectrum. The industry proposed TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), a method of expanding capacity by slicing the radio frequency into sequential time slots.
Qualcomm had a radically different solution: Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA.) The idea was to use advanced mathematics to assign a unique code to every voice packet. If it worked, Qualcomm calculated that the technique could pack 10-15 times more calls into the existing radio spectrum.
Because the market viewed CDMA as unworkable, traditional VCs wouldn’t fund it; building cellular base stations and prototypes was pricey, and the industry had already rejected the standard. So SBIR stepped in, with a total of $1.5 million non-dilutive R&D funding from the NSF & DoD.
This gave the company badly needed cash to acquire talent and build physical prototypes for secure military applications. From there, they moved into OmniTRACS, a satellite-based tracking and messaging system for commercial trucking.
In 1989, Qualcomm signed a landmark deal with Pacific Telesis to demonstrate the technology, and by 1993, CDMA was the industry standard, and Qualcomm owned patents on the hardware, software, and power controls to make it work. Qualcomm remains a telecom giant, worth over $50 billion today.
iRobot Makes Bomb Disposal & Military Reconnaissance Safer
Today, iRobot is best known as the creator of the Roomba and other consumer robots, but originally, the company was focused on cutting edge military research. Starting in the 1990s, the company received over $16 million in SBIR funding over multiple rounds, primarily from the DoD. The funding was used to develop a family of robots to scope out dangerous areas and detect and clear explosives.
The research was originally geared toward military needs, like clearing minefields and detecting IEDs in complex urban environments where a soldier might otherwise fall victim to an explosive booby trap. But iRobot’s product, the PackBot, soon found service in other dangerous environments where a human scout might get hurt. They were used to search for World Trade Center survivors in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and to assess damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant after the cataclysmic Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, where radiation was too high for human explorers. iRobot also partnered with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to help develop space exploration robots, and built robots for first responders and other specialized applications.
All that experience at the cutting edge of military and NASA robotics enabled iRobot to develop the technology that powered their famous robotic vacuum cleaner, the Roomba, as well as the mopper robot, Braava, and other consumer robots. It’s a fantastic example of how dual use tech that starts in military applications can quickly lead to big jumps in the consumer market.
Martek: From Space Travel to Infant Formula
In the early 1980s, aerospace contractor Martin Marietta began researching microalgae for the NASA Ames Research Center. The goal was lofty: to discover a single biological agent that could provide a sustainable food supply, oxygen source, and waste recycling catalyst for long, interplanetary voyages.
Core scientists from the project founded Martek biosciences in 1985, and spent 17 years researching algae fermentation through dozens of SBIR grants. Their big breakthrough was using specific strains of algae and fungus to produce the omega fatty acids, DHA and ARA, essential building blocks for human brain and eye development. While these fatty acids occur naturally in human breast milk, they were completely absent from commercial infant formulas at the time.
Martek’s SBIR funding enabled them to persevere and develop shelf-stable nutritional additives for infant formulas. Today, Martek’s patented nutritional additives are found in over 99% of infant formula sold in the United States.
From infant formula to space exploration, to defense, SBIR has helped American companies innovate since 1982. Here’s to another 44 years on the cutting edge!