GoKawiilThe US National Science Foundation, one of the world’s biggest funders of fundamental science, is expected to slash the spending of most of its directorates.Credit: IB Photography/Alamy
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is planning to expropriate money from its core science programmes to fund an initiative from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Nature has learnt. The move would strain budgets that are already tight and force the agency to rescind funding for research proposals that are nearly finalized.
NSF staff members — who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation — and an internal NSF ledger seen by Nature suggest that the NSF plans to claw back around US$500 million that has already been distributed to grant-making divisions. That money would be withdrawn from three of the NSF’s eight main areas, or directorates: engineering; computer and information science and engineering; and mathematical and physical science.
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To accommodate the expected funding withdrawal, programme officers, who handle grant proposals, at the three directorates are being required to pull back proposals that have already passed peer review and have been recommended for funding. More than 100 proposals have been affected; many of the researchers who submitted those proposals had already been informally notified of their awards, according to agency staff members.
The revocation of funds would add to the squeeze on the NSF. The US Congress trimmed the agency’s total funding for this year by roughly 3% from 2025 levels, to $8.75 billion, but internal budget numbers seen by Nature indicate that about $1 billion of that money never made it to the directorates.
News of the withdrawal of funds from NSF directorates was first reported by Science, which stated that the funds were going to the NSF X-Labs initiative, a ten-year programme to support technology development.
An NSF spokesperson did not comment on the amount of withheld or withdrawn funds and did not specify how any such funds would be spent. But the spokesperson said that reports of funds being redirected to X-Labs are “simply wrong” and noted that funding does not expire until the end of fiscal year 2027. “Proposals that are received but not awarded remain eligible for future consideration, including in Fiscal Year 2027, unless or until they are declined or returned,” the spokesperson said.
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Several NSF staff members told Nature that at least some of the funds will be funnelled to another project, a brainchild of the White House OSTP.
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