The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new initiative to convert new research into products and industries. The $1.5bn programme, called X-Labs, however, has been criticized by some in the US scientific community given that financing the plan could come via cutting the budgets of current NSF directorates by as much as 30%.
The NSF says that the first round of X-Labs funding will focus on two areas – one on quantum sensing and AI-driven computational imaging while the second area will be in the development of quantum information and computing.
The projects that are chosen will recieve $1.5m over a nine-month period to carry out futher work. The NSF will then select projects to move onto the next phase in which they will recieve a further $10-50m per year for between 2-3 years.
According to an NSF spokesperson, X-Labs are designed to “spur progress on platform technologies critical to US competitiveness”, supporting high-risk, high-impact research that requires “substantial resources beyond traditional mechanisms.” A key goal of the handful of labs, the spokesperson adds, is to “reduce the time it takes to go from insight to impact through this new investment framework”.
While critics don’t have an issue with the concept, there are concerns that it is coming at the expense of basic research. Former presidential science adviser and NSF director Neal Lane told Physics World that X-Labs is a “terrible idea”.
“There’s been a push to get more practical and get NSF involved in ensuring that science it funds actually makes it to the marketplace,” adds Lane. “But suddenly it’s been taken to extremes by the Trump administration. They’re trying to cut as much basic research as possible and put it all into an experimental programme.”
‘Without precedent’
The X-Labs programme comes as the NSF – one of the main science funding agencies in the US – still lacks a director. The previous head, Sethuraman Panchanathan, resigned in April 2025 after receiving orders from the White house to cut the agency’s budget by more than 50% (US Congress later restored much of the funding). Tensions rise between US administration and science agencies
The Trump administration has announced Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor, as the next director, but he has yet to go through the necessary Senate confirmation.
There is also no further movement on the new personnel that will make up the National Science Board, the body that acts at the NSF in a way similar to a company’s board. In April, the US administration announced that it was terminating the positions of all 22-member NSB “effective immediately” without disclosing the reasons for the move.
“[That removal of the NSB] is quite without precedent,” adds Lane. “It seems to be an effort to simply eliminate the NSF.”
