ACCEL-KS
Accelerating Concept to Commercialization in Kansas, or ACCEL-KS, is a proof-of-concept grant program developed by the Kansas Department of Commerce, run in partnership with Groover Labs. It helps early-stage Kansas startups move from concept toward commercialization.
The program finds technology startups across Kansas and supports them with grants up to $25,000, along with wraparound support that helps founders turn early-stage concepts into working prototypes ready for commercialization.
As part of the program, Groover Labs connects founders to organizations active in the regional startup ecosystem, so recipients get the programming and consulting they need to prototype and scale their products.
This is Groover Labs’ second year partnering with the Kansas Department of Commerce on the program. Last year, we received nearly 70 applications and funded 25 founders who built incredible products in AgTech, ConTech, defense tech, EdTech, aerospace tech, AI tech, and more.
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OVERVIEW
the Timeline
Applications open Monday, August 24, 2026, at 9 a.m. CT, and close Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 5 p.m. CT. Learn more about the program timeline here.
The process
A review committee evaluates every qualifying application.
Selected applicants are invited to a short virtual presentation, and awardees are chosen from that group.
The Work
Then, the real fun begins.
Founders who engage with program support are more likely to succeed.
Together, we’ll sprint from the first tranche distribution all the way to the end of the program in June 2027.
Who can Apply?
Kansans
ACCEL-KS is a statewide initiative from the Kansas Department of Commerce’s Office of Innovation, built to accelerate the commercialization of groundbreaking ideas and products, transforming them into market-ready solutions.
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Your product needs to be scalable.
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Your project has a reasonable path to commercialization.
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Applicants must be U.S. citizens.
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You need to have a Kansas address.
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You’ll need to provide us with a W-9.
Grant Funding
We award grants up to $25,000 to founders with strong product concepts and clear development paths. The funding supports the proof-of-concept stage, helping you build and refine an early-stage product.
Recipients submit one milestone report, which releases the second funding tranche, and one final report, which closes the program. They also participate in the grant kick-off and product demonstration showcase at the end of the grant period.
Use of Funds
You may want to review the Budget Template before you start the application process. Choose one of the following options, and download or copy a Budget Template:
Click this LINK to make a copy of our Budget Template in Google Sheets. The copy will appear in your Google Drive account.
Click this LINK to download a copy of our Budget Template in Excel. The link will automatically download the template into your browser's download manager.
After June 30, 2027, when the program ends, does this purchase still have value to you?
If the answer is “no”, because you used it to build and prototype your product - if it was consumed, machined, soldered, tested, burned down, blown up - it is most likely approved.
If the answer is “yes”, because you still own a machine, a license, a computer you could resell, the answer is most likely not.
We make this distinction because we’re awarding you Kansas taxpayer money, and its purpose is to prove a concept or idea, not capitalize a business. Grant funding that buys materials, expertise, and testing is buying the things you need to prove your idea works.
We report expenditures to the Kansas Department of Commerce at the end of the program, and what we report helps determine if the program continues on. We want it to keep going for founders yet to come.
These are general guidelines. If you think your case is one that should be approved, provide more detail on why. Or ask about it on an Office Hours call.
Details
We can’t possibly know all the ways a founder might legitimately use a resource, so we’ll just list some examples of things we won’t fund, based on grant parameters and prior experience:
General overhead. Rent, utilities, internet, phone, insurance, office supplies.
Salaries and your own time. Your pay, your co-founder’s pay, and employee wages.
Financing costs. Debt service, loan payments, interest, refinancing, and savings.
Prior costs. Anything you spent before your award date.
Business formation and basic legal. LLC filings, registered agents, contracts, and accounting services.
Some specific examples of what we probably won’t fund (not an exhaustive list):
Software licenses that extend beyond the grant period
Software licenses that you’re already paying for
Tools and equipment available at Groover Labs or one of our partners
Marketing, including travel to a trade show, and advertising
Again, these are general guidelines. If you think your case is one that should be approved, provide more detail on why. Or ask about it on an Office Hours call.
ECOSYTEM SUPPORT
Every ACCEL-KS award comes with wraparound support that connects founders to mentorship and hands-on programming. Grant recipients can opt into wraparound programming to help take a concept and develop it into a commercially viable prototype. We connect you with subject-matter experts, equipment and software, and flexible workspace. Rarely does innovation emerge without the support of a talented community. If you don’t have one, we do our best to help you build one.
Most programming is in-person or virtual, depending on the format. Topics include customer discovery, hardware prototyping, business model design, capital strategy, “Design-for” experimentation, and commercialization.
Benefits
Weekly coaching sessions and connections to our startup community.
Technical consulting with experts in hardware product development, go-to-market strategy, product-market-fit, intellectual property, commercialization strategies, and more.
Startup programming from ecosystem support organization with wide-ranging topics, from identifying customers to raising capital.
WorkSpace and Equipment
Software founders receive a hotseat membership at Groover Labs, where they can work and collaborate on their projects.
Hardware founders receive a workbench membership where they can work on their project and get prototyping guidance.
The Maker Labs includes a metal shop, wood shop, fab lab with a variety of 3D printing options, electronics lab, PCB assembly line, and more.
Ecosystem partners
Consultations with AI and SaaS product development experts
Defense innovation OnRamp Hub: Kansas, “Design for” bootcamp
Go-to-market strategy consultations
Groover Labs’ 12-week startup course CAMPFIRE
NetWork Kansas Financing Consultations
Wichita State University College of Engineer Project Innovation Hub’s “Design for Experiments” working sessions
Wichita State University Office of Tech Transfer and Commercialization
Rural Founders
We partner with rural communities across the state to find founders in rural Kansas. During the application period, we may travel to your county and talk with local entrepreneurship supporters about the program, answer questions, and build awareness.
The Kansas Department of Commerce asks that at least 30% of ACCEL-KS projects come from rural communities across the state.
42% of applicants to the 2025-2026 cohort came from rural Kansas, and 44% of projects that received awards came from rural communities.
Almost all of them started with the Groover Labs team traveling to counties that showed interest in ACCEL-KS.
A note on AI
A word of caution: LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT telling you that you’ve got a great idea that you should develop may not be enough for grant funding.
When we meet with founders, we ask if they’ve tried to build a prototype.
If they haven’t, we suggest they go to the local hardware store, buy some duct tape and baling wire, and give it shot. Or the software equivalent of that.
V1 doesn’t have to be perfect. But we need to see that you’ve done more than pull some engineering schematics off an LLM that provides you with inferential concepts. The odds that you’re going to build a Thorium reactor on the moon are low, even if ChatGPT says otherwise.
Same for marketing websites written by AI disguised as AI-infused SaaS concepts.
Founders from last year’s cohort used AI to build SaaS projects, were awarded grant funding, and then hired contract engineers to refine their product concepts.
But a website telling us what your SaaS product could do is not the same as demonstrating a v1 of your SaaS product doing it.
To quote from Bret Stephens’ opinion piece in the New York Times in August 2026, “We become better thinkers by investing into … writing a degree of attention we’d never give it if we relinquished the task to A.I.”
So please, do the work. Think it through.
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