49Chestnut LLC

49Chestnut LLC, doing business as Boston Electronics, distributes advanced electro-optical components and specialized photonics equipment to federal research and defense agencies as a prime contractor on 180 firm fixed-price purchase orders (99% of recent awards). The vendor is a for-profit limited liability partnership headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts, and a child entity of Fiber Optic Center Inc., a self-certified small disadvantaged business and Subchapter S corporation. Boston Electronics does not carry SBA 8(a) or other set-aside certifications in its own name; it competes predominantly full-and-open, though two awards in the footprint carry total small business set-aside designations.

Boston Electronics' capability portfolio centers on time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) systems, fluorescence lifetime imaging modules, quantum cascade lasers, single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) cameras, and related photonics instrumentation. Representative recent prime work includes a $70,691 firm fixed-price purchase order from the Office of Naval Research in December 2025 for two quantum cascade laser combs (ultimate completion February 2026); a $76,742 non-competitive sole-source order from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in June 2025 for microscope components; a $78,735 total small business set-aside purchase order from Air Force Materiel Command in May 2025 for a SPAD camera with accessories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; and a $243,951 order from the Federal Communications Commission in September 2022 for terahertz power sources supporting 5G/6G atmospheric propagation testing. The vendor also supplied a $65,754 Leica SP8 multi-photon fluorescent lifetime imaging system to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (total small business set-aside, September 2023) and a $67,523 TCSPC power package to NIAAA in July 2024.

Customer concentration is dispersed across research agencies. The top five customers by award count account for 43% of all awards and include the Office of Naval Research (22 awards, $593 thousand combined potential value), NASA Goddard Space Center (18 awards, $298 thousand), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (16 awards, $533 thousand), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (12 awards, $376 thousand), and NIAAA (10 awards, $357 thousand). Ranking by potential value shifts emphasis toward ONR, NIST, NICHD, and NIAAA — the dollar concentration is less acute than award count suggests, reflecting the vendor's position as a serial small-dollar equipment supplier across 41 distinct federal agencies rather than a sole-source anchor to any one customer. Activity has been uneven: eight awards in 2021, three in 2022, four in 2023, five in 2024, and three in 2025 year-to-date. The combined potential value across all 181 awards is $5.5 million, with obligated dollars running to $6 million, indicating the vendor's typical contract values in the $17 thousand to $78 thousand range.

Boston Electronics carries one subcontract relationship: a sub-award to Aerospace Corporation in August 2023 for engineering services on DFB lasers with high heat load housing. Primary NAICS coding splits between Other Electronic Parts and Equipment Merchant Wholesalers (87 awards) and Analytical Laboratory Instrument Manufacturing (42 awards); primary PSCs include Laboratory Equipment and Supplies (79 awards) and Semiconductor Devices and Associated Hardware (15 awards). The vendor operates with no IDIQs, GWACs, or multi-agency blanket purchase agreements in the source portfolio — work flows through individual agency purchase orders and two one-task-order BPAs. Boston Electronics' federal contracting history extends back to 1998, positioning it as an established supplier of specialized photonics instrumentation to civilian research and defense organizations across NIH sub-agencies, NASA, NIST, ONR, the FCC, and the Department of Energy.

Specialist in photodetection, signal processing for photodetection, and photon sources UV-visible-IR including single photon detection