Notice of Funding Opportunity Solicitation for Applied AI Models Innovation Challenge

Solicitation No. 2026-JAII-05

The Massachusetts AI Hub, a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (Mass Tech Collaborative or MassTech) is issuing this Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Massachusetts Applied AI Models Innovation Challenge, (NOFO No. 2026-JAII-05) (the NOFO) to solicit responses from qualified firms (Respondents) interested in receiving grant funding for translational funding and contribute to the Data Commons Collaborative (DCC). These awards will fund AI model development projects that address critical societal and industry challenges across key sectors of the Massachusetts innovation economy: health care, life sciences, financial services, robotics, advanced manufacturing, climate tech and education.

This program is designed as translational funding, addressing the gap between early research and real world deployment. Applicants are invited to propose innovative methods for adapting, evaluating and operationalizing existing AI and ML models, including fine tuning open source models or creating new model components where technically feasible within the one million dollar funding cap. Projects may include training or fine tuning work when it directly supports an applied use case. Proposals for entirely new model architectures must include strong justification and demonstrate feasibility within program constraints. Use cases of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Health Care: clinical decision support, patient care, public health management
• Life Sciences: drug discovery, genomics, diagnostics
• Financial Services: fraud detection, underwriting, wealth management
• Robotics: autonomous navigation, human-robot interaction, precision manipulation
• Advanced Manufacturing: Digital twins for prototypes, predictive maintenance, supply chain Optimization
• Climate Tech: carbon reduction, energy efficiency, sustainable materials
• Education & Society: personalized learning, workforce development, public-interest technology
• Defense and National Security: intelligence fusion, competitive AI swarms, autonomous logistics, and AI-enabled simulation capabilities or cyberspace operations

Full details included in the solicitation linked below.

Download Application Documents:

• Download Solicitation No. 2026-JAII-05 (PDF) (amended 2/18/26)
• Download Amendment 1
• Download Attachment C - Budget Template (Excel)