Cubrc, Inc.

Cubrc, Inc., a Buffalo, New York-based nonprofit research and development organization, operates as a prime contractor on defense and civilian research programs spanning aerothermal testing, hypersonic missile development, artificial intelligence, and advanced engineering services. Cubrc competes full-and-open across the federal marketplace with no set-aside posture; the organization's 239 prime awards (90% of its 266-award portfolio) and $86.12 billion in combined potential value position it as a substantial federal R&D provider.

The vendor's customer concentration pivots on defense, with the Department of the Navy's Naval Sea Systems Command anchoring the dollar potential at $76.55 billion across five awards, predominantly through the SEAPORT-NXG $4 billion multiple-award IDIQ (January 2, 2025, through January 1, 2029). The Army's Research Development and Engineering Command follows with 37 awards totaling $8.55 billion in potential value. This concentration is heavily skewed: the Navy's five awards carry nearly 89% of Cubrc's combined potential value, while the top five customer organizations across both rankings account for 99% of combined potential. By award count, Navy Office of Naval Research trails Army RDECOM (24 awards versus 37), and both Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Research Laboratory round out the top tier with 24 awards each. NASA Johnson Space Center ranks second by count (27 awards) but carries only $32.3 million in potential value—a signal of smaller, transactional task orders rather than ceiling-based IDIQs.

Cubrc's core facilities and recurring work center on the Aerothermal Aero-Optics Evaluation Center (AAEC) in Cheektowaga, New York, a specialized testing platform for experimental and computational aerodynamics research at hypersonic speeds. The AAEC anchors a $71 million single-award Army RDECOM IDIQ (Contract W31P4Q20D0047) that has generated 28 task orders totaling $112.6 million in combined potential value. Representative AAEC follow-on work includes a $10.5 million cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order (September 23, 2025, through September 24, 2026) under the Army RDECOM vehicle, a $3.999 million Army order (January 13, 2025, through January 31, 2026), and a $9.999 million Army order (September 20, 2024, through September 20, 2025). Beyond facility operations, Cubrc holds an OTA with the Air Force for $27.3 million on the Cross Domain Advisor capability—data fusion and multi-intelligence analysis for pattern-of-life discovery (awarded September 18, 2025, through September 18, 2029)—and a $29.999 million OTA with the Air Force Research Laboratory for the Robot Scientist for Threat Emulation and Response (ROSTER) program (awarded September 23, 2022, through November 22, 2028). Non-defense work includes a $2.161 million definitive contract with the FDA for universal control peptides development for T-cell assays (August 16, 2024, through September 30, 2026).

Cubrc holds a $249 million Basic Ordering Agreement with the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center for AI data readiness and engineering services (July 14, 2022, through March 10, 2027), and recently qualified for the $151 billion Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) multiple-award IDIQ issued by the Missile Defense Agency (awarded December 29, 2025, through December 28, 2035). Additional vehicles include a $3 million single-award indefinite-delivery contract with Air Force Materiel Command for NIST-traceable coaxial Type-E thermocouples supporting the Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel No. 9 at Arnold Engineering Development Complex (awarded December 31, 2025, through December 31, 2030), and multiple NASA and Army task-order vehicles. The top five parent vehicles account for task orders with combined potential value of roughly $188 million, indicating that while Cubrc sits on substantial ceiling vehicles, near-term obligated work is concentrated in the Army RDECOM AAEC IDIQ.

Cubrc acts as a prime on 90% of awards and operates with a subcontracting model focused on specialized technical partners. Across SCI-reportable service contracts (a subset covering invoiced revenue above $150 thousand), average sub-hours share stands at 54%, indicating material reliance on subcontractor delivery. Named subs across recent awards include North Wind Systems LLC (doing business as Calspan Systems Corp) for facility enhancement and design support under Army AAEC orders, Covan Group LLC (a veteran-owned small business and SDVOSB) for tactical AI support on the Battlespace Operations Watcher (BOW) program ($24.1 million ONR definitive contract, October 23, 2023), the University of Notre Dame for aero-optics instrumentation design and testing under multiple AAEC efforts, and Charles River Analytics (an employee-owned small business), Black Owl Consulting (a woman-owned small business), and Lattice Technology Group (a HUBZone-certified firm) across the ROSTER OTA. Cubrc also subs to large integrators: recent sub positions include work with BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems on pulsed and continuous wave innovation (February 9, 2026), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on SM-6 Block IB development and border-protection mission engineering (October 8, 2025, and May 8, 2025), and Parsons Government Services on intelligence development systems (multiple task orders, September 2024). This teaming pattern positions Cubrc as a specialized capability provider to both direct federal customers and large primes rather than a full-service systems integrator.

Activity has grown modestly year over year—from 10 prime awards in 2022 to 18 in 2025—with only five awards (combined potential value $46 million) completing within the next twenty-four months, limiting near-term recompete exposure. SCI-reported invoicing across FY2022–FY2025 totaled $1.2 million (prime records only), a partial view excluding goods, products, and classified work; this SCI figure represents a fraction of Cubrc's true federal services revenue and does not reflect the organization's primary R&D and testing work. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable service contracts ran a median of $515.17 per hour, ranging from $204.34 at the 10th percentile to $825.99 at the 90th percentile, consistent with specialized technical and engineering labor. The vendor holds two named subsidiaries: Ahmic Aerospace LLC, a veteran-owned small business and service-disabled veteran-owned business holding a patent on direct-strain sensor design for non-planar flow surfaces (the basis of Cubrc's sole-source sole-source $75,710 NASA procurement of an instrumented bump duct in July 2026), and Avarint, LLC.