Federal funding helped launch Qualcomm
in: Prosperity
Some innovative technological advances have come from third party companies, rather than directly from federally funded research, but did you know many of these companies actually got their start thanks to federal funding? Every agency of the government with a budget for R&D participates in a program call the “Small Business Innovation Research” (SBIR) program, which provides targeted grants towards jumpstarting entrepeneurs with big ideas. In the 1980s, the company Qualcomm was a small business with a burgeoning interest in satellite communications. SBIR grants provided it with its first funding that enabled them to develop the technology that would transform the world of wireless communications, eventually giving us standards like 5G and 4G. Qualcomm has also provided vital communication technology for transportation services like trucking. As of 2023, Qualcomm is ranked 3rd in the world for number of patents. Thanks to the governments initial investment, Qualcomm now employs ~50,000 people and has a revenue of ~40 billion dollars, of which two-thirds comes from the department that received the initial SBIR grants.
- States: CA
- Organizations: National Science Foundation , Department of Defense , Qualcomm
- Topics: Technology
- Federal Grants: NSF 1214461 , NSF 5247 , DOD 9018 , DOD 10089 , DOD 10090 , DOD 10088 , DOD 9016 , DOD 9017 , DOD 6300
- Links and further reading: [ link1 | link2 | link3 | link4 ]