National Science Foundation - America's Seed Fund

America’s Seed Fund is a program within the National Science Foundation and housed within the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships. We offer funding for early-stage R&D and take no equity in your company — you retain full control over your team, the direction of your work, and your intellectual property. We fund startups across nearly all technology areas and markets like artificial intelligence, energy, medical devices, robotics, semiconductors, and many more. We focus on transforming scientific and engineering discoveries into products and services with commercial and societal impact. The deep technologies we fund show promise but their success hasn’t yet been validated. And, each year, we award $200+ million in research and development (R&D) funding to about 400 startups across the United States.