Small businesses that sell into defense, biotech, manufacturing and transportation supply chains have nine new regional brokers to help them reach prime contractors and buyers. The Small Business Administration announced more than $7 million in awards to establish nine new Regional Innovation Clusters (RICs), bringing the national network to 12. The awards come a year and a half after the Department of Government Efficiency terminated earlier cluster contracts, and five of the nine new clusters are focused on defense.
SBA published the awards on Oct. 6. FedScoop reported on Oct. 22 that the nine new clusters join three that survived the DOGE cuts, that the contracts were enacted Sept. 30, and that each runs for two years.
Which Nine Organizations Won Regional Innovation Cluster Awards?
SBA's release lists each awardee with its region and industry:
- Blackberg Group — Tampa Bay, Fla. — Biotechnology
- C4 Holding CO, LLC — Southern California — Defense
- EndRun — Arizona — Defense
- Hyperion Technologies — San Antonio and Austin, Texas — Advanced Manufacturing
- Precision Platform Solutions — Louisiana — Defense
- StartUp Junkie Consulting — Ozarks (Ark., Okla., Mo.) — Transportation
- Traverse Connect — Northern Michigan — Defense
- University City Science Center — Mid-Atlantic (Pa., N.J., Del., Md., Washington, D.C.) — Biotechnology
- University of Central Florida Research Foundation — Central–Southern Florida — Defense
SBA defines a cluster as "a concentration of small businesses, suppliers, buyers, manufacturers, research institutions, and capital providers organized around a single industry in a single geographic area." According to the release, the clusters will offer business acceleration programs, market research, customer discovery, and government and commercial contracting assistance, with the stated goal of "shortening the distance between a small business with a product and the prime contractor, manufacturer, or buyer that needs it."
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler framed the awards as industrial policy. "President Trump is restoring America’s industrial capacity—from defense systems and biotechnology to advanced manufacturing and transportation," Loeffler said in the release. She added that the result would be "a stronger industrial base, more resilient supply chains, and less dependence on foreign competitors."
Why the AI and Cyber Clusters Did Not Appear
The award mix departs from what SBA originally asked for. FedScoop reported that the agency's August 2025 solicitation, issued a few months after DOGE's cuts, sought organizations focused on advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, nuclear microreactors, quantum tech and emerging systems, AI, cybersecurity, IT, and semiconductors. None of the nine awards lists AI, cybersecurity, quantum or semiconductors as its industry.
SBA rejects the idea that it dropped those fields. "The new awards identify the industries the clusters will serve, rather than every technology they will support," an SBA spokesperson told FedScoop, "so the emphasis on defense and manufacturing does not represent a shift away from those technologies." The spokesperson said the emphasis fits the administration's focus on "rebuilding American industrial dominance."
The spokesperson also defended the earlier terminations, telling FedScoop that the discontinued RICs "failed to deliver results for small businesses" and that the program is now refocused "on reindustrialization across critical industries." The new awardees, the spokesperson said, have "proven experience supporting critical industries and technologies."
How $7 Million Compares With the Program's $9 Million Budget
The money is smaller than in recent years and the program's future funding is uncertain. FedScoop reported that the $7 million comes from congressionally appropriated funds through SBA's entrepreneurial development programs, less than the $9 million allocated to the program in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026. The White House's initial fiscal 2027 budget zeroed out the RIC initiative altogether.
If the awards were split evenly, each of the nine clusters would receive roughly $780,000 over its two-year contract, though neither source gives per-cluster amounts. SBA launched the program in 2010 as a relatively low-cost way to connect businesses, suppliers and institutions within a region, FedScoop noted.
Jason Rittenberg, who worked with SBA and several clusters while at an Ohio-based science and technology nonprofit, told FedScoop the new awards were "a bit of a surprise" given the administration's moves to delay funding and cut contracts at other agencies. He said the program "has shown meaningful benefits for businesses and employees," and that applicants may now see the competition as less risky than it would have felt a year ago.
Heath Naquin, who leads the Mid-Atlantic Biomanufacturing Scale-Up Cluster, said the new cluster should help highlight "all the assets that are across the entire region" for biomanufacturers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
What It Means for Contractors
For small firms in the nine regions, the clusters offer a route to market research, customer discovery and contracting assistance aimed at defense primes and commercial buyers. Companies in Arizona, southern California, Louisiana, northern Michigan and central and southern Florida are the most likely to find defense-oriented services, since those five clusters carry a defense designation.
Primes and large manufacturers may want to treat the clusters as supplier-scouting channels. SBA's stated purpose is to connect small businesses with "the prime contractor, manufacturer, or buyer that needs it," which suggests cluster events and member contacts could be a practical way to find domestic subcontractors in the five defense regions.
Firms working in AI, cybersecurity or quantum should not assume they are excluded. The SBA spokesperson said the awards identify the industries clusters serve rather than every technology they support, so a cyber firm selling to defense suppliers may well fit within a defense cluster. Companies should contact the cluster operator in their region directly and ask what services are open to them.
Planning horizons are short. The contracts were enacted Sept. 30, 2026 and run for two years, and the White House's initial FY2027 budget zeroed out the program. Contractors who want to use cluster services should do so early, and trade groups that want the program continued will need to make that case to appropriators during the FY2027 process.
