Small Business Grants in Arizona

Read this one as a place on a trip rather than a cheque. The Arizona Commerce Authority runs AZ STEP with the Small Business Administration to get Arizona firms exporting for the first time or into a new market, and what it funds is the activity, international trade shows and expos, business to business and business to government meetings and trade missions, ExporTech training and go to market work, United States Commercial Service help, and translating your website for a foreign market. There is no form, no window and no published award size. You start by contacting the ACA international trade team and they tell you what is running.

You qualify if you run an Arizona business that meets SBIR eligibility. That means a for profit firm with a place of business in the US, with no more than 500 employees including affiliates. US citizens or permanent residents must own and control more than 50 percent of it. The Arizona Commerce Authority runs the programme with the US Small Business Administration and gives funds, resources and training to help you write a stronger SBIR proposal. Six applicants in each round receive up to $3,000 each. The fall window is open until November 2, and the spring window runs March 1 to 19.

Not cash, and not for most companies. The Advanced Manufacturing Facilities grant is an Arizona Commerce Authority partnership with Arizona State University that matches your spending on ASU Core Facility time one for one, up to $75,000, so it halves the cost of using equipment you could not otherwise afford. It is aimed squarely at semiconductor and hard materials startups that do not already use those facilities, or use them lightly, and the three relevant labs are Advanced Electronics and Photonics, NanoFab and the Eyring Materials Center. Money goes first come, first served, and a panel scores applications against the published eligibility guidelines. Read those before you apply.

A deal closing fund the Arizona Commerce Authority negotiates directly with large employers relocating to or expanding in the state. There is no application form and no window. In the January to March 2026 quarter it committed $6 million across two awards, $5 million to Amkor Technology against 1,319 jobs and $1.227 billion of capital investment, and $1 million to Northrop Grumman. Statute reserves a share for rural, tribal and microenterprise projects, but that share has historically gone to intermediary programmes rather than to individual businesses.

Free legal, accounting and financial advisory help for very small and underserved Arizona businesses getting ready to borrow or raise. The Commerce Authority is blunt about what this is, its own page says the SSBCI programme is not a grant programme. You receive advisers, never money. The capital it prepares you for sits in three separate places, the Arizona Loan Guarantee Program through eleven partner lenders, Arizona Venture Co Invest, and the multi fund venture programme.

A loan, not a grant, and you borrow from a local lender rather than from the state. Arizona has set aside $5 million for firms with fewer than five staff, lent out at $2,000 to $50,000 a business through community development financial institutions and nonprofit lending partners around the state. You may use it for running the business and creating or keeping jobs, for working capital, for buying or improving property, for machinery and equipment, and for refinancing existing debt. The gap worth knowing about is geographic. The Office of Economic Opportunity has still not appointed a dedicated lender for Maricopa or Pinal counties, so a Phoenix business applies through Growth Partners Arizona and a Pinal business through CIC or Groundswell Capital.