White House Moves to Redirect $200 Billion in Annual Research Funding Toward AI and Individual Scientists

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report on July 21 titled "Science: A New Golden Age" that proposes to rebuild how the United States allocates roughly 200 billion dollars a year in federal research spending. The plan would steer money toward individual scientists and artificial intelligence and away from the universities and consensus peer-review panels that have administered federal research since the 1940s, according to The Hill.

The core mechanism is a shift from institutional grants to portable individual awards modeled on the National Science Foundation's graduate fellowships, which a researcher keeps when moving between institutions. OSTP Director Michael Kratsios co-signed a companion budget memo with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. Every agency with at least 3 billion dollars in 2026 research budget authority must submit an action plan within 90 days and incorporate the priorities into its fiscal 2028 budget request, Unite.AI reported. Named national missions include quantum computing, commercial fusion power, and returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028, a framing echoed in Russian-language coverage summarizing the plan.

What is verified is the report and the memo. What is not yet settled is money. The design directs agencies to change practice, but the actual money is controlled by congressional appropriations, and universities recover large indirect-cost overhead from federal grants that portable fellowships do not replace. Whether the reallocation survives Congress and legal challenge is the open question, not the intent.