Skip to content
Palanor is in early release, with our founding customers.Become a founding customer →
The Real Rate Index45.30.00Palanor: Inflation Pulse50.7+0.06Palanor: Geopolitical Stress59.7-0.25Palanor: Liquidity58.8+0.87Palanor: Capital Tightness46.4-1.11Palanor: Industrial Pulse70.10.00Palanor: AI Margin Compression52.8-0.63Palanor: Consumer Confidence47.1-1.44Palanor: US Dollar Strength46.5+0.01Palanor: Labor Heat63.20.00Palanor: Recession Vocabulary28.7+0.64Palanor: Uncertainty Index53.2-0.24Palanor: US Jobs Health40.30.00Palanor: Energy Transition37.7+0.74Palanor: Reshoring Sentiment22.7-0.15Palanor: AI Substitution28.6+0.24The Social Fabric Index45.70.00Palanor: Geopolitical Anxiety19.8+0.43Palanor: Quit Pressure34.7-2.85The Mania Index88.00.00The Palanor Index57.5+0.37Cost Disease Spread33.20.00Palanor: US vs China49.4-0.05Rise of Socialism Index40.6-0.18The Bubble Memory98.5-0.00Palanor: Steward Confidence51.0+0.19The Long Watch90.30.00The Reshoring Index55.20.00The Capital Return Index80.2-0.77The Discourse Index74.3+1.91The Hesitation Index33.4+2.64Palanor AI Inference Cost Index71.2-0.03The AI Capex Race Index76.1-2.39The Boardroom Index81.7-0.84The Layoff Cycle Index35.6+2.75Capital Deployment Posture Index61.7-0.67The Consumer Health Index41.8+0.07Labor Hours Composite44.40.00The Dollar Erosion Index65.5-1.13Palanor: Risk Appetite35.4-0.76
PalanorPalanor

Line

AI Share of SBIR and STTR Awards

AI-related awards as a share of all SBIR and STTR awards, by count and by dollars, %, federal fiscal years

Share of awards: 25.0% in 2025the highest in data back to 2020+10.1 pp since 2020
YTD1y2y5y10y20yAll
ForecastOffContinuationForesight™
Show ▾
U.S. recessionsShades the months the NBER dates as recession. U.S. charts only.High and lowMarks the highest and lowest readings in the window shown.
Current·Data to 2025

Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.

Share of awards · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years

Share of award dollars · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years

Dashed: the projection from the latest reading. Shaded: the range about two in three outcomes land in. A projection, not a promise.

Palanor classification of SBIR.gov award data: an award is AI-related when its title or abstract uses a published AI phrase (artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, language model and others; the full list is in each signal’s methodology). The newest fiscal year has few awards (lapse in program authority, upload lag).

How far artificial intelligence has spread through the startup research the federal government funds: the share of SBIR and STTR awards whose own description names AI or machine learning.

What this chart reads

Sources

AI Share of SBIR/STTR Awards. Source: SBIR.gov award data file (with abstracts), published by the U.S. Small Business Administration and refreshed monthly: https://data.www.sbir.gov/mod_awarddatapublic/award_data.csv. SBA: "Government information on SBA.gov is in the public domain." Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, SBIR.gov. The AI classification is Palanor's: keyword rules on each award's title and abstract (the abstracts are read, never stored).

AI Share of SBIR/STTR Award Dollars. Source: SBIR.gov award data file (with abstracts), published by the U.S. Small Business Administration and refreshed monthly: https://data.www.sbir.gov/mod_awarddatapublic/award_data.csv. SBA: "Government information on SBA.gov is in the public domain." Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, SBIR.gov. The AI classification is Palanor's: keyword rules on each award's title and abstract (the abstracts are read, never stored).

Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.

Related charts

AI & technology· StudioForecast

AI Share of SBIR/STTR Awards

25.0%Data to Sep 2025
AI & technologyForecast

U.S. Businesses Using AI

Share of U.S. businesses using AI to produce goods or services, and share expecting to within six months, %

24.6%Data 19 days ago
AI & technologyForecastMoving

AI in Text Index: S&P 500 Earnings Calls

How often calls use the words language models overuse, against their level before ChatGPT (January 2021 to September 2022 = one), trailing 90 days

1.05Data today
AI & technologyForecast

What Companies Talk About on Earnings Calls

Average mentions per S&P 500 earnings call, rolling 90 days

11.41 viewsData today
AI & technology

Hyperscaler Capital Spending

Capital expenditures, trailing 12 months, $ billions

$173BData to Jun 2026
AI & technologyForecastMoving

AI in Text Index: 10-K Risk Factors

Words language models overuse in S&P 500 annual reports, Item 1A, latest 10-K per company, against the level in 10-Ks filed before ChatGPT (= one)

1.41Data today

Cookies

We only use essential cookies to keep you signed in and remember your theme. No analytics, no tracking, no ads. See the Privacy Policy for the full read.