Numfocus, Inc.

Numfocus, Inc., a non-profit scientific software organization headquartered in Austin, Texas, develops and maintains open-source Python libraries for scientific computing and receives federal research funding as a prime grant recipient from NASA, with no set-aside designations across its recent award footprint.

Numfocus operates exclusively as a grant recipient rather than a contract prime, with 90% of its 21 recent awards issued as prime grants or cooperative agreements and 10% as sub-recipient work under university and national laboratory grantees. The vendor's core capability is the development, maintenance, and community support of Python-based open-source scientific software ecosystems — specifically Astropy (astronomy and astrophysics), Matplotlib (data visualization), SunPy (solar physics), and MLPack (machine learning) — deployed across NASA's Science Mission Directorate and used by the broader scientific research community. Representative prime awards include a $1.8 million cooperative agreement from NASA Shared Services Center (awarded March 1, 2025, running through February 28, 2030) to execute balanced science programs aligned with National Academies guidance and NASA exploration initiatives; a $634.5 thousand research grant (awarded March 1, 2022, completed February 28, 2026) for continued Astropy project development and support; and a $340.3 thousand research grant (awarded December 16, 2021, completed December 15, 2025) for Matplotlib modernization and community engagement. A recent $103.7 thousand project grant awarded October 1, 2024 (completing September 30, 2026) supports enhancement of MLPack usability for low-resource spaceflight machine learning.

Customer concentration is extreme: NASA's Shared Services Center accounts for 19 of 21 awards and all $4.6 million in combined potential value, with the Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration each holding a single sub-$40 thousand award. Activity has grown from two awards in 2020–2021 to four in 2022, six in 2024, and five in 2025. Four awards carrying combined potential value of $329 thousand complete in the next twenty-four months, representing moderate recompete exposure. Numfocus subcontracts as a sub-recipient on a University of Washington grant for XArray Python library enhancement aligned with NASA data analysis (awarded July 18, 2024) and performed contingent labor and human resource services under Triad National Security's Los Alamos National Laboratory management contract (August 5, 2024). The vendor's federal footprint is narrowly specialized: mission-critical Python scientific software infrastructure for NASA, with no significant defense, civilian agency IT, or commercial-equivalent work.