Sofar Ocean Technologies, Inc.

Sofar Ocean Technologies, Inc., doing business as Spoondrift Technologies, manufactures ocean monitoring equipment and develops data platforms for federal agencies as a prime contractor on purchase orders, research grants, definitive contracts, and an Other Transaction Agreement, competing predominantly full-and-open without set-aside certifications. The San Francisco-based small business specializes in wave buoys, sensors, smart mooring systems, and oceanographic data services, with a federal award portfolio concentrated in Navy research, NOAA procurement, and civilian science agency grants.

The company's capability portfolio centers on deployable and fixed ocean observation platforms. Representative prime work includes a $7.8 million cost-plus-fixed-fee definitive contract from the Office of Naval Research for observation and predictive modeling of ocean weather using distributed ocean networks (March 2025, extending through September 2028); a $501,473 Other Transaction Agreement with ONR for Bristlemouth dissemination to scale, an open marine connectivity standard (January 2026, through January 2029); a $746,575 research grant from NASA's Shared Services Center for balanced science program execution aligned with National Academies guidance (January 2026, through January 2030); a $336,307 purchase order from Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command for air-deployable and surface-deployable buoys with Iridium telemetry and hydrophone capability (September 2025, completed May 2026); and a $588,056 NASA research grant for machine learning and data assimilation applied to CYGNSS observations for air-sea interface modeling (August 2024, through July 2027). The company also holds a $175,000 single-award indefinite delivery contract with USGS for a 5-year subscription to its Spotter Platform service providing real-time and historical data from over 1,000 ocean monitoring buoys globally, and a $475,000 GSA Federal Supply Schedule contract (awarded August 2025, through July 2030) covering environmental measuring instruments and earth observation solutions with individual Spotter line items, deployment packages, and monthly data subscriptions.

Office of Naval Research is the dominant customer, anchoring 14 awards worth $8.9 million—about 50% of combined potential value across the portfolio. NOAA ranks second by award count (8 awards, $178 thousand), followed by USGS (6 awards, $306 thousand) and NASA's Shared Services Center (6 awards, $1.4 million). The concentration is stark: ONR and DARPA together represent 51% of all potential value despite being only 34% of award count, while NOAA, USGS, and smaller civilian agencies supply volume but modest individual contract sizes. This dual customer profile—Navy research anchoring large development contracts versus civilian agencies placing smaller buoy and subscription orders—creates both depth and breadth in the customer base.

Recent activity declined from a 2023 peak of 12 awards to 8 in 2025 and 3 through January 2026, though dollar value remains stable because large ONR contracts extended through 2028 and 2029. Six awards with combined potential value of $644 thousand complete within the next twenty-four months, presenting modest recompete exposure; the larger ONR development work extends beyond that window. The company competes predominantly full-and-open across all award types, with sporadic small-business set-asides on NOAA and USGS purchase orders but no recurring SBA designation. A subsidiary, Sofar Ocean USG, Inc., is carried in the corporate structure but no distinct capability separation is described in the source.

Sofar Ocean acts as prime on 40 of 44 awards (91%), with 4 sub-awards as a sub-recipient on university-led NSF and ONR grants—including a sub-award from the University of Washington for an EAGER-funded modular air-deployable ocean profiler (November 2025) and sub-awards related to air-deployed wave buoys for hurricane forecast improvement (August 2024) and an NSF Convergence Accelerator backyard buoys project for underserved communities (March 2024). The subgrant footprint reflects the company's role as technology provider and field-testing partner to academic oceanography and environmental research initiatives rather than as a traditional subcontractor to defense primes.