High Impact Technology (HIT) Fund — 2025 Call for Applications
The HIT Fund awards are for Stanford University innovators whose work has progressed towards developing solutions for specific commercial applications. The awards are intended to provide the advisory support for the team to develop a business-centric mindset and funding for critical de-risking activities that enable the team to swiftly move from research innovation to technology transfer or secure startup funding.
Advisory Support: Awardees receive resources and hands-on support in navigating the opportunities and challenges that arise in preparing for commercialization.
Milestone-based Funding: Funding is intended to address only the key technical or market risks that are a barrier to attracting collaborators and investors by the end of the HIT Fund project. Funding is up $250,000, for up to 15 months. While the maximum award is $250,000, the large majority of the projects will be funded up to $150,000.
Additional information and full application can be downloaded at goto.stanford.edu/HITfund
For questions associated with the HIT Fund or the application process please contact:
The HIT Fund team at TheHITfund@stanford.edu
- Clearly identified market need, as evidenced by demonstrated interest from potential industry partners or customers.
- Technology/solution has the potential to scale and have a societal or economic impact
- Competitive advantage over solutions that are currently available or in development
- A demo, prototype, and/or pilot program exists, or is proposed, sufficient to garner interest for technology transfer
- Current Stanford faculty, students, postdocs, or staff members
- Open to any Stanford school or institute
- Each proposal must have at least one faculty member as a principal investigator (PI)
- The project must have a clearly identifiable innovation component and the intellectual property must have been disclosed to Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL)
Funding must be for projects undertaken at Stanford University. The project must have a clearly identifiable innovation component. Proposals must include an active principal investigator (PI) at Stanford. This is a competitive selection process and only the top-ranked proposals will be awarded.
Examples of activities eligible for funding include, but are not limited to:
- Building customer prototypes
- Conducting pilot studies
- Market development activities and consultants
- Materials purchases and contract manufacturing for customer samples
- 3rd party reliability and performance validation
- Regulatory & reimbursement consultants
- Techno-economic analysis
- Stipends and salaries for students and postdocs
- Other pre-approved activities
