BIRD Cyber

BIRD Cyber

Funds BIRD Cyber joint cyber projects between Turkish and American partners developing infrastructure resilience solutions.

Eligibility · United States, Israel

BIRD Cyber is a trilateral grant initiative launched in June 2022 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), and the BIRD Foundation. It funds joint U.S.-Israeli R&D projects aimed at enhancing the cyber resilience of critical infrastructure in both nations. Each funded project receives a conditional grant of up to $1.5 million, covering no more than 50% of the joint R&D budget; the balance is contributed by the applicant pair. Repayment is royalty-based and triggered only upon commercialization, making the instrument non-dilutive.

Eligibility requires a binational team: two companies, or one company paired with a university or research institute, with one entity based in the United States and one in Israel. Projects must be at a relatively advanced technology readiness level, capable of pilot or market-oriented implementation. Topic areas are jointly defined each cycle by DHS S&T and INCD based on urgent cyber challenges; the most recently published 2024 cycle covered themes including cyber protection for legacy medical devices, BGP hijacking remediation, threat hunting on encrypted traffic, and human-machine AI interface research. As of May 2026, the 2026 cycle call dates had not yet been published.

Given DHS S&T and INCD's joint topic-setting authority, competitive proposals should address priority challenge areas published in the annual call documentation rather than self-defined R&D agendas. Teams with prior government or critical-infrastructure deployment experience, and those demonstrating a clear dual-national commercialization path, align most strongly with the program's evaluation criteria.