Which industries have the most grant funding?
Step 1 of the grant partnership playbook: the fit test
By Wesley Stevens, Founder of Quillify. October 3, 2026.
Which industries have the most grant funding?
Defense, healthcare and biotech, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, research and education, and agriculture have the deepest public funding, through federal research programs, state economic development funds and tax credits. E-commerce, consumer social, retail, traditional real estate and professional services have little. A sector with thin direct funding can still benefit when its customers are funded, such as schools, cities and hospitals.
Where the money is
Defense. The Department of Defense runs the largest Small Business Innovation Research program of any federal agency, and its primes are required to plan subcontracting with small businesses on large contracts.
Healthcare and biotech. The Department of Health and Human Services, mostly through the National Institutes of Health, runs the second-largest SBIR program, alongside foundation money for health.
Clean energy. The Department of Energy funds research, demonstration and deployment, and federal and state incentives support clean energy investment.
Advanced manufacturing. State economic development funds, federal manufacturing programs and semiconductor incentives all target production capacity. One Quillify customer won $5 million from a state semiconductor fund.
Research and education. Universities, school districts and education nonprofits are among the largest grant recipients, and they buy from companies to do the funded work.
Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture runs research, rural development and producer programs, plus its own SBIR program.
Where it is thin
E-commerce, consumer social, retail, traditional real estate and professional services rarely see direct public funding. Programs exist at the edges, such as export assistance or local small-business grants, but they seldom change the economics of a company in these sectors.
The second question: do your buyers value it?
A thin sector can still use the playbook when its customers are funded. A software company selling to school districts, cities or hospitals sits next to some of the largest grant flows in the country. It may never apply for a grant itself.
The reverse also holds. If neither you nor the people you sell to draw on public funding, the effort is better spent elsewhere. The full playbook.
Checking your own sector
Search your field and look at three things: how many open programs there are, which agencies and funders run them, and who has won similar work before. Quillify searches grants, government contracts and community lenders together. It checks SBIR and STTR opportunities against more than forty years of those awards, and other federal opportunities against recent federal spending. That shows whether work like yours has been funded.
Start on the steps that are possible today.
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