NSF X-Labs RFI September 2026.pdf

U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF)

Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)

Request for Information (RFI)

Identifying the Next Generation of NSF X-Labs Topics

Item Detail

Issued by U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP)

Publication date September 16, 2026

Response deadline October 30, 2026, 11:59 p.m. ET

How to respond Online submission portal at https://airtable.com/appNk4qtVYmefmLJP/pag65OQxCgsshOSae/form

Who should respond

Anyone with a substantive view on where the next platform-technology bottleneck lies, including academia, industry, national laboratories, startups and venture capital, philanthropy, nonprofits, professional societies, state and local government, students, and the interested public

Point of contact XLabs@nsf.gov

1. Purpose The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks input on scientific and technological opportunities that could become future topics for the NSF X-Labs Initiative.

NSF X-labs aims to accelerate scientific and technological breakthroughs by supporting a new generation of independent, milestone-driven research organizations: full-time teams of talented, mission-driven personnel pursuing platform-technology breakthroughs that are difficult to achieve when using more conventional funding and research mechanisms. The NSF Technology, Innovation and Partnership (TIP) Directorate’s December 2025 RFI on the X-Labs concept drew substantial, constructive responses from across academia, industry, philanthropy, state and local government, venture capital, and the public, with that input shaping the initiative's design and first funding opportunities. As of the date of release of this RFI, NSF X-Labs has now launched three topics, Quantum Systems: Interconnects and Integrated Photonics, Scientific Instrumentation for Sensing and Imaging, and AI for Physical Systems, with two more topics announced for future release: From Sequence to Function; Computation at the Limit of Physics.

While these topics span several critical areas of the emerging technological landscape, NSF believes the NSF X-Labs initiative holds promise for an even wider range of topics.

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This RFI seeks input about candidate X-Labs topics, the bottlenecks currently preventing significant progress being made in those topics, new opportunities that could be developed or leveraged to overcome them, and the conditions needed for an independent NSF X-Labs team to break through one or more of those bottlenecks.

Please note that no award will be made on the basis of this RFI (see Section 7). NSF welcomes input across all fields of science and engineering supported by the Foundation, including opportunities spanning disciplines and Directorates. NSF also welcomes input from the larger set of research, development and innovation communities interested in the X-Labs initiative. In particular, NSF is interested in X-Labs topics that align with the foundational research areas and national science and technology missions described in the OMB-OSTP Fiscal Year 2028 Research and Development Budget Priorities Memorandum.

2. Overview of the NSF X-Labs Initiative

The NSF X-Labs initiative aims to launch and scale independent, milestone-based research organizations that pursue ambitious scientific and technological objectives. Led by the NSF’s TIP Directorate, X-Labs represent a bold, flexible, and outcomes-driven program designed to establish novel platform technologies capable of unlocking entirely new sectors, including new fields of scientific inquiry.

The NSF X-Labs initiative responds to the urgent need for the United States to maintain global leadership in science and technology by enabling new pathways for R&D activities that are hard to pursue through traditional grants and laboratories. The program will support full-time research and development (R&D) teams focused on use-inspired scientific breakthroughs and foundational platform technologies that traditional university and industry labs cannot easily address due to the interdisciplinary and inter-sector coordination, large-scale engineering capability, and level of autonomy required. NSF X-Labs teams will benefit from ambitious R&D goals, operational autonomy, milestone-based funding, and the ability to engage across academia, industry, national laboratories, and nonprofit sectors.

The NSF X-Labs Initiative is informed by metascience scholarship to promote an organizational approach to platform technologies inspired by researcher use or scientific and technological bottlenecks.

Historical examples of platform technologies illustrate the breadth of their potential impact, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR), CRISPR-Cas9, next-generation sequencing (NGS), very large-scale integration (VLSI), light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and AI-based protein structure prediction.

To achieve these goals, the NSF X-Labs initiative combines milestone-based, multi-year support with operational autonomy. The NSF X-Labs initiative will utilize Other Transaction (OT) contracts because they allow for the flexible, autonomy-driven structure needed for independent teams to achieve high impact. An OT contract is a statutorily authorized instrument available to NSF; it is neither a FAR-based procurement contract nor a financial assistance instrument, such as a grant or cooperative agreement.

NSF X-Labs Topics and Missions NSF will release specific topic areas under the NSF X-Labs initiative via Topic Announcements. Topics will center on fields of research where breakthroughs could create or reshape entire scientific fields and technology sectors and where U.S. competitiveness is a priority.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/White-House-Fiscal-Year-2028-RD-Priorities-Memorandum.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/White-House-Fiscal-Year-2028-RD-Priorities-Memorandum.pdf

Each proposing team will specify its mission, defined as the novel platform technology and key use-inspired research solutions that the proposed NSF X-Lab is uniquely suited to tackle. Each proposing team should have a clear vision of how its mission will result in an end-state that creates or reshapes an entire field of scientific research or sector of technology, and how its mission is currently unmet by existing organizational structures and funding mechanisms.

Performance Objectives for NSF X-Labs Teams Each NSF X-Labs team will execute upon its mission to drive use-inspired research and develop novel platform technologies that can serve as the foundation for future innovation and breakthroughs.

Successful teams will leverage new organizational research structures to greatly accelerate the emergence of new technologies and advance fields of use-inspired research. Examples of high-impact outcomes may include the development of:

• Foundational platform technologies that enable significant downstream breakthroughs in one or more sectors;

• Solutions for specific technological challenges or bottlenecks that create or reshape entire fields of scientific inquiry; and/or

• Early-stage prototypes that are not otherwise funded by industry and that accelerate the emergence of novel technology capabilities.

Programmatic Structure The NSF X-Labs initiative will include a preparation phase (Phase 0) with a Phase 1 Go/No Go selection period beginning around the last quarter of Phase 0. NSF intends to award teams selected for Phase 1 an approximately 24- to 36-month period of performance with the intention of renewing high-performing teams for Phase 2 following subsequent Go/No Go selections. The durations of Phase 1 and Phase 2 are flexible, allowing teams to advance faster upon meeting Progress Milestones.

3. Characteristics of X-Lab Topics Not every scientific problem or opportunity is suitable to be addressed by an NSF X-Labs topic. The questions in Section 4, below, are built around the characteristics that distinguish an NSF X-Labs topic from work better done using other funding and research mechanisms and approaches. NSF seeks specific capability gaps whose resolution could lead to platform technologies that unlock substantial scientific or technological advancements. Potential respondents may find it useful to test a candidate topic area against these characteristics before submitting:

# Characteristic of an X-Labs Topic

Description

1 The topic needs many hands.

Progress depends on several fields or players collaborating, rather than one discipline working alone or simply advancing an existing research agenda, and cannot be achieved via more traditional mechanisms, organizations, or approaches.

# Characteristic of an X-Labs Topic

Description

2 The topic has a multi-year reach.

Good topics involve research that is sufficiently ambitious to involve real technical risk, yet achievable enough to be plausible. The scope of work should be decomposable into nearer-term milestones without over-constraining the creativity required to take “big swings.”

3 The topic invites experimental work and periodic validation.

Progress can be measured by building and testing in order to measure and evaluate advances, as well as understanding when to adjust or abandon a particular approach.

The topic addresses a foundational platform technology.

The topic involves at least one consequential technical bottleneck that currently prevents scientific progress, and for which an enabling capability would support many subsequent discoveries, applications, and/or scientific users.

The topic is best suited for the X-Labs mechanism.

Success requires sustained, coordinated work by a dedicated, often multidisciplinary team with shared, independent, and focused leadership.

You can tell when the problem is solved.

Success can be designated by a concrete, dated, verifiable outcome or achievement.

NSF is equally interested in hearing how an otherwise promising area might fail one of these tests, and why. Knowing what would be unlikely to make for a good NSF X-Labs topic is as useful to NSF as knowing what a good X-Lab topic would be.

4. Questions Respondents are invited to answer any and all questions that they believe are relevant, and to which they believe that they can add value. In-depth responses to a few questions may be more useful than shallower responses to all of them, although all RFI responses are welcome.

4.1. The opportunity

Q1. What future technology or technological capability would matter enormously, and is not expected to arrive on its own within the next decade?

Please state this concretely enough that an informed observer could later judge whether it had been achieved. “What if we could…” is a useful start.

Q2. What advancements, activities, and/or innovations would such a capability unlock?

What results and/or activities does a successful X-Labs Mission enable? Does the technology become possible, cheap, fast, safe/secure, and/or routine beyond what is possible today, and in which sectors, products, or areas of science?

Q3. Who is already working on this topic, and why is the sum of their effort insufficient?

Identify the programs, companies, consortia, and/or facilities that exist today that address this capability and describe specifically where and why they are insufficient for success.

Q4. What is the cost of not pursuing it?

Including, where relevant, who else is positioned to get there first and what follows if they do.

Q5. How should NSF define the topic’s boundaries?

Identify adjacent activities or capabilities that would fall outside a focused X-Labs effort in this topic.

4.2. The bottleneck

Q6. What is (are) the critical technical bottleneck(s) standing in the way?

Please identify specific limitations (e.g., tools, methods, material, measurement, cost curve, standard, piece of infrastructure) that are holding progress back. If there is more than one critical bottleneck, please distinguish which is most critical to address and why.

Q7. Why has that bottleneck persisted?

If the potential on the other side of the bottleneck is so great and yet it remains, why? Why haven’t the limitations been addressed to date?

Q8. What is enabled downstream once the bottleneck resolves, and how quickly?

NSF X-Labs is looking for platform effects, where a solved problem opens many new opportunities, advances, and industries. What would success in this topic mean, and how soon might those impacts be expected? What level of performance would make the capability substantially useful for its intended users?

Q9. Which parts of the bottleneck are not purely technical?

Please identify the degree to which breaking through one or more of these bottlenecks depends on non-technical mechanisms, e.g., a particular policy or regulatory pathway, supply chain, data access, standards, workforce, procurement, and/or liability. Describe what an NSF X-Lab should and should not be expected to move.

Q10. What outcomes or outputs must be delivered to enable broad adoption of the proposed capability?

What would need to be delivered alongside the core advancement for others to use the proposed capability effectively? Consider relevant artifacts, documentation, access services, or engagement activities.

4.3. Readiness and evidence

Q11. What has changed recently (e.g., in the last one to five years) that makes this challenge appropriate for an NSF X-Labs topic now?

Please specify, e.g., specific results, cost curves, instruments, datasets, and/or capabilities, that were not previously available that now suggest the possibility of new breakthroughs – even if still technically immature and risky – were there to be NSF X-Labs investment.

Q12. What might be the first decisive experiment or milestone?

Is there a derisking milestone that could be built or tested within roughly 12-18 months that would tell NSF whether this is tractable? What would be a result that would tell NSF to stop?

Q13. What might be a dated, verifiable finish line?

Please suggest a key milestone that any informed observer could verify, e.g., “by <date>, <measurable thing> at <technology readiness level>.”

Q14. What is a realistic time horizon?

If NSF X-Labs were to launch a topic in this space, what might drive the difference between fast and slow success? How sensitive is the proposed capability or effort to funding and support?

Q15. What evidence supports your assessment?

Please provide any (non-proprietary, non-sensitive) references that support your response, e.g., publications, preprints, patents, benchmark results, datasets, industry roadmaps, and/or direct experience.

4.4. Why an NSF X-Lab?

Q16. What about this problem or bottleneck prevents a single university project, a national lab, or existing company from pursuing the proposed capability successfully?

What specifically requires a full-time, independent, interdisciplinary team with a multi-year runway? What limits the ability of existing funding sources or incentives to support this effort? Characterize the potential impact of NSF support.

Q17. What might an “ideal team” in this space look like?

Consider what might be most important in terms of which disciplines and skills are involved, what balance of research, engineering and entrepreneurial capability is necessary, and at roughly what scale.

Q18. What enabling infrastructure (e.g., facilities, instruments, fabrication access, testbeds, datasets) would be required for this topic, and do they exist today?

Please identify any infrastructure requirements that are necessary, and whether they currently exist and can be leveraged, or whether these requirements would also have to be developed (either by the same NSF X-Lab or some other mechanism or organization).

Q19. Are there one or more plausible paths from breakthrough to private investment or public adoption? What are they?

Who might buy, license, build on, fund, or regulate the outcome or end product, and what would have to be true for that handoff to happen?

4.5. Resources and partnerships for an NSF X-Lab Topic

Q20. What role(s) could an NSF X-Labs “Consortium” play in accelerating innovation and advancing the NSF X-Labs vision? How might such a consortium be structured?

NSF is contemplating the value of an NSF X-Labs consortium to help identify, coordinate, and leverage a range of resources – including, but not limited to, opportunities for partnerships and access for NSF X-Labs to specialized equipment, testbeds, fabrication capabilities, and/or infrastructure – in order to augment NSF X- Labs' capabilities and potential impact. What are some key benefits a consortium might offer? What activities and functions should a consortium offer? What are key design principles related to such a consortium? What are significant risks and challenges such a consortium might face and what strategies would mitigate those risks and challenges?

Q21. Does your institution have available facilities or resources for the proposed NSF X-Lab in particular, or for NSF-X-Lab topics more generally or with existing topics (e.g., quantum systems), that might be leveraged via partnerships?

Please describe any existing facilities, specialized equipment, testbeds, fabrication capabilities, and/or infrastructure your organization possesses that could directly support R&D in your proposed NSF X-Labs topic, and/or R&D in existing X-Labs topics, including quantum interconnects, integrated photonics, or related enabling technologies. Please include technical specifications, availability, and unique capabilities as relevant.

What operational factors should NSF be aware of when coordinating access to your facilities or resources, e.g., scheduling constraints, security requirements, export controls, safety protocols, staffing needs, and/or geographic limitations?

Q22. Do you have any in-kind contribution interest that might support this NSF X-Lab topic?

Is your organization willing to provide free or discounted in-kind access (e.g., facility time, instrument hours, staff expertise) to support NSF X-Labs teams? If yes, please specify the type of in-kind contribution, expected duration, and any conditions, limitations, and/or required agreements.

Q23. What opportunities exist for NSF X-Labs partnership models and/or new funding pathways?

Would your organization be interested in partnering with NSF or philanthropic entities to subsidize or fully support access to these facilities (e.g., cost-sharing, sponsored access, philanthropic underwriting)? If so, please describe the partnership model(s) you would consider.

4.6. Disagreement and failure

Q24. Where might well-informed experts disagree with your assessment, and why?

Please consider the strongest objection you can imagine someone making against your proposed X-Lab topic or field, and the people or communities most likely to make it. Please articulate why you think the investment is still worth making.

Q25. What would be the most likely way this fails, and what would change your mind?

What early evidence, result, or event might cause you to abandon this idea? Consider the distinction between technical failure (e.g.," the science does not work”) from non-technical failure (e.g.," the science works and nothing happens” or “the approach fails due to some programmatic or coordination limitation”).

Q26. What should NSF measure to know whether the NSF X-Labs topic is working — at three years, five years, and ten years?

What do you think should serve as key measures to evaluate NSF X-Labs impact (including learning from failure)? What might be some leading indicators available well before any commercial outcome?

Q27. What would constitute an “intelligible failure”?

NSF believes that negative results and failed experiments can produce real value by virtue of progressing knowledge and learning, provided those are shared more broadly. How might NSF recognize and report failures in order to enhance national capability, without creating misaligned incentives or unintended consequences? How can “intelligible failure” be operationalized without leading to premature conclusions that an NSF X-Labs topic or team is not achieving strategic objectives?

Q28. Is there anything this RFI has not asked that it should have?

NSF welcomes additional thoughts, ideas, or questions that you believe we should consider going forward.

5. Responses

Responses to this RFI should be submitted through a structured online form hosted on Airtable:

https://airtable.com/appNk4qtVYmefmLJP/pag65OQxCgsshOSae/form.

No account or software purchase is required. Respondents who cannot use the online form may request a plain-text template from XLabs@nsf.gov; a response arriving via email will be considered.

The form is organized to match Section 4: one field per question, with a 1,300-character limit for each question. The limit exists to make responses comparable to one another and to ensure NSF is able to process all the responses we anticipate receiving.

Please note that multiple submissions from the same respondent are permitted; however, each individual response will be evaluated on its own merit.

6. What NSF will do with responses All responses are read by NSF staff and approved federal contractors. To make that possible at volume, TIP will use structured analytic support and AI tools to de-duplicate near-identical submissions, cluster related topics, and produce comparable summaries. Every determination that affects which topics advance will be made by NSF staff. Summaries produced in support of the analysis are checked against the underlying response before use, and any respondent may request the summary of their own submission.

NSF may publish a synthesis of RFI submissions, potentially including the areas of substantive disagreement among respondents. NSF intends to use the results to inform the scoping of future X-Labs topics, including through regional and virtual “Visioneering” workshop sessions.

7. Disclaimers and submission conditions

1. This RFI is issued for planning and information-gathering purposes only. It is not a funding opportunity, a solicitation for proposals, a Notice of Funding Opportunity, nor a promise of any of these. NSF will not make an award on the basis of any response to this RFI.

2. NSF will not pay for information provided in response to this RFI and will not reimburse any cost of preparing or submitting a response.

3. Responses are voluntary. Response is not required to participate in any current or future NSF X- Labs funding opportunity, and it confers neither advantage nor disadvantage in any NSF merit review.

4. Please do not submit proprietary, confidential, business-sensitive, classified, export-controlled, or personally identifiable information beyond the contact fields requested. Responses may be subject to public release. Material a respondent considers sensitive must be clearly marked; NSF will make reasonable efforts to honor such markings but cannot guarantee confidentiality.

5. NSF may publish responses in full or in part, publish aggregated analyses, and quote responses in any resulting public document, consistent with the public-release preference each respondent selects in the form.

https://airtable.com/appNk4qtVYmefmLJP/pag65OQxCgsshOSae/form

6. Responses will not be returned, and NSF will not respond individually to each submission.

7. NSF may extend the response deadline or modify the submission mechanism. Any change will be posted on the X-Labs website.

8. Questions about this RFI Questions about this RFI, the submission portal, or accessibility accommodations may be sent to XLabs@nsf.gov. Some answers to questions may be provided via an FAQ document. NSF may hold an informational webinar following publication; if so, details will be posted on the X-Labs website.