(Editor's note: This story has been corrected from its previous version, which misstated information about planned awards.)
The Defense Department plans to release the next Microelectronics Commons call for projects at the beginning of fiscal year 2026, a senior defense official said today.
Dev Shenoy, Microelectronics Commons executive director and principal director for microelectronics in the office of the assistant secretary of defense for critical technologies, discussed the initiative's schedule today at the annual Microelectronics Commons meeting.
The longer timeline for this CFP will allow for project teams to complete year one development and meet their goal metrics, and with the timeline, the government can also determine which projects will continue into year two, according to Shenoy.
The timeline will also enable hubs and members to “focus on the success of their projects, increase their engagement with other funding opportunities to become more financially sustainable and further mature their hub models,” Shenoy said.
The schedule also allows for “technical financial diligence” when reviewing the recent call for topics, Shenoy said.
That recent call for topics, issued by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering through its partners in the initiative -- Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division and the National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL) -- came in late June and closed in late July.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks also spoke today on how the initiative has grown over the past year.
The program boasted more than 360 member organizations across 35 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico around this time last year, Hicks told the audience during her keynote earlier in the day.
“And we thought that was pretty impressive,” she said.
Now, the program’s community members have “more than tripled in size, in just 12 months,” coming in at more than 1,200 member organizations, according to Hicks.
“Now that’s really impressive,” she said. “And with that growth, our reach has expanded to even more states -- like Arkansas, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin.”
As opposed to nearly a year ago, when the program awarded nearly $240 million to the eight regional innovation hubs, “as of today, we’ve awarded nearly $700 million toward this endeavor’s goal of bridging the microelectronics gap from lab-to-fab – that infamous valley of death between research and development and production,” Hicks continued.
Hicks said she is still looking toward the future, however.
“We’re looking forward to the progress that we’ll see in the year to come -- as the hubs continue to develop their operational models, as new projects get awarded and funded, and as our investments deliver for the warfighter at greater speed and scale.”