NIH Common Fund Venture Program

NIH Common Fund Venture Program — Open Funding (Seed)

Supports high-potential short- to medium-range initiatives that can seed major breakthroughs.

The NIH Common Fund Venture Program, launched in FY2024, provides a framework for short-term, focused NIH-wide initiatives that are too nimble or cross-cutting to fit within a single Institute's portfolio. Each Venture initiative is capped at three years and up to $5 million annually per initiative (maximum $15 million total per initiative), and must advance the shared missions of multiple NIH Institutes, Centers, and Office of the Director simultaneously. Venture initiatives are not for pilot programs, single-ICO priorities, or open-ended exploratory research without specific milestones.

Five active Venture initiatives are funded in FY2026: NIOI (Non-Invasive Optical Imaging), Oculomics (imaging technologies for oculomics), SysBio (Systems Biology Data Platform), NBSxWGS/BEACONS (Newborn Screening by Whole Genome Sequencing), and TRDNT. The FY2026 Congressional Budget Request allocates $4.011 million to the Venture Program overall, down from $15 million in FY2025. Governance is top-down: ideas are submitted through Institute, Center, and Office (ICO) Directors to the NIH Office of Strategic Coordination, evaluated by a Venture Board of ICO Directors, and require final NIH Director approval before becoming active initiatives.

Because the governance pathway flows through ICO Directors rather than direct researcher application, organizations seeking Venture program funding should understand their institution's relationship with relevant NIH Institutes and identify which ICO Director might champion a proposal. Current FOAs are published at commonfund.nih.gov/venture; contact is CFVenture@od.nih.gov. The program is particularly well suited for technology platforms, data infrastructure, or cross-disciplinary tools where the limiting factor is coordination and scale rather than scientific uncertainty — matching the Venture model's emphasis on boldness, speed, and multi-Institute relevance.