Finding state AI RFPs

State and city AI work is real, but it is not posted in one national inbox. A California grant, a DC solicitation and a New York City City Record notice can all fund machine learning in the same week and never appear on the same website. BWAI’s v1 slice is Federal + California, DC and New York City. This guide explains how those three local sources actually work, how they overlap with Grants.gov and SAM.gov, and how to watch the states that are not in v1 yet without treating a third-party aggregator as the official record.

Why state RFPs are hard to find

Federal civilian grants concentrate on Grants.gov. Many federal contracts concentrate on SAM.gov Contract Opportunities. States did not copy that pattern. California’s grant portal is separate from its procurement system. The District of Columbia posts solicitations through the Office of Contracting and Procurement’s PASS marketplace. New York City publishes procurement notices in the City Record, with a public dataset that BWAI reads. New York State, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Texas and others each run their own vendor systems, with different login rules, keyword search, and close-date fields.

AI labels are inconsistent too. One agency will write “artificial intelligence” in the title. Another will bury “machine learning” in a statement of work. A third will say “data analytics” and mean a dashboard, not a model. BWAI only keeps a listing when official text names AI, ML, LLMs or a related core term as real work, then quotes that sentence. Laundry lists (“including but not limited to artificial intelligence”) are out. That same rule applies to California, DC and New York City, not only to federal notices.

What BWAI covers in v1

The jurisdiction chips are Federal, California, DC and New York City. Deselect Federal if you only want the local slice. Core AI is the default view: the title or a named program is about AI. All AI-related adds synopsis-only matches, which is how a City Record tree-inventory notice that uses machine learning in the body can appear. Counts on the home page follow the selected view. Coverage open counts do not include forecasts; forecasts are listed separately.

California listings come from the CA Grants Portal. DC listings come from OCP PASS, filtered by close date so expired solicitations drop. New York City listings come from the City Record Online dataset and deep-link by PIN. None of those three is a federal source. A DOE or NSF AI grant that happens to be eligible in California still lives on Grants.gov and is tagged Federal.

California

Start at the California Grants Portal, which the state maintains as the public catalog of state grant opportunities. Search for “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” as separate queries. Read the posting status. California uses “Ongoing” for programs that do not have a single close date; BWAI displays those as Rolling, and only those. A forecast-style estimate is not Rolling. If the portal shows a close date, BWAI converts it to Eastern Time for the main line and keeps Pacific Time underneath when the source zone is not ET.

California procurement (Invitations for Bid, RFPs on Fi$Cal / Cal eProcure) is not the Grants Portal. v1 does not scrape Fi$Cal. If you sell to California departments as a vendor rather than a grantee, watch the state’s procurement system directly and treat BWAI’s California chip as grants only. Confirm eligibility, match requirement, and due time on the official notice. BWAI does not file for you and does not replace the portal login your agency named.

District of Columbia

DC solicitations are posted through the Office of Contracting and Procurement. The public search at OCP PASS is the official list BWAI reads. Filter by open solicitations and sort by close date. DC clock time is already Eastern. If PASS has no close date, BWAI will not invent one; the card shows “No deadline listed” rather than Rolling. Rolling is reserved for California ongoing programs.

DC often posts statements of work as attachments. The PASS summary line may not say AI even when the PDF does. BWAI quotes official text it can fetch. If the public summary is thin, open the source and read the attachment before you decide the work is or is not AI. Set-asides, CBE preference, and living-wage rules live in the DC notice, not on the BWAI card.

New York City

New York City procurement notices appear in the City Record. The City publishes City Record Online as an open dataset, which is what BWAI uses. Listings deep-link by PIN so you land on the official request, not on a copy. Search the City Record for “artificial intelligence”, “machine learning”, and the acronyms AI and ML as standalone tokens. A LiDAR or 311 analytics notice may only mention machine learning in the body; that is All AI-related, not Core AI.

City Record due dates are Eastern. If a notice has a time, BWAI shows it. If the source zone is not ET, the original sits on a second line (“4:30 PM CDT per source” is the federal pattern; NYC is usually already ET). Do not treat a PASS or City Record row as a New York State Contract Reporter notice. Those are different governments and different logins. New York State is on the coming-next list, not in v1.

Federal portals still matter

State teams still chase federal money. An NIH or NSF AI grant that funds a California lab is a Federal listing on Grants.gov. A DoD AI contract that a DC company might bid is a Federal listing on SAM.gov. Searching only the CA Grants Portal will miss those. Searching only SAM.gov will miss City Record. BWAI’s Federal chip is Grants.gov plus SAM.gov, filtered for AI work. Keep it on unless you truly want local-only.

SAM.gov is updated nightly from the official bulk extract. Grants.gov is checked daily. If a SAM notice has no response date in that extract, BWAI shows “No deadline listed” instead of guessing from archive dates or synopsis prose. Confirm on the SAM.gov opportunity page, where an amendment may have added a date the nightly file has not picked up yet.

How to search the official sites

Use the agency’s own search first, then use BWAI as a filter. On each portal, run at least two queries: “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning”. Add “large language model” or “LLM” if the agency funds language work. Reject hits where AI is only in a prohibited-use sentence or a laundry list of emerging tech. Download the PDF the day you start writing. Amendments happen. If BWAI and the source disagree, the source wins.

Watch time zones. A Pacific close at 11:59 PM is 2:59 AM ET the next calendar day in winter, 3:59 AM ET in daylight time—BWAI converts and shows both. Same-day federal cutoffs drop off the live feed once that instant has passed, not at midnight. Forecasts are labeled Forecast and are not open for submission. Stale forecasts keep a Last confirmed date from the source, not from the last crawler run.

States coming next

v1 does not read NY State Contract Reporter, Virginia eVA, Maryland eMMA, Florida’s vendor bid system, Texas ESBD, Washington WEBS, Ohio Buys, Pennsylvania PA eMarketplace, North Carolina eVP, or Illinois BidBuy. Those states are listed as coming next: Texas, New York State, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Washington, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Illinois. Until they ship, search those official systems directly. Do not treat a commercial bid board as a substitute for the state site the statute names.

If you only need one of those states today, save a vendor profile on that state’s portal, turn on their keyword alerts for AI and machine learning, and keep BWAI’s Federal chip on so you still see NIH, NSF, DOE and SAM.gov AI work you can pursue from anywhere.

Official sources

Read the primary portals, not this page, before you submit:

California Grants Portal — official catalog of California state grant opportunities.
DC OCP PASS — District of Columbia solicitations maintained by the Office of Contracting and Procurement.
NYC City Record — New York City procurement notices; BWAI deep-links by PIN from the public dataset.
Grants.gov — federal grants, including awards a state lab may still pursue.
SAM.gov Contract Opportunities — federal contracts; nightly bulk file is BWAI’s SAM source of truth.

BWAI is independent and not affiliated with California, the District of Columbia, New York City, Grants.gov or SAM.gov. Coverage on this site is Federal + California, DC and New York City. If a listing is missing, check those official sources first. The feed is a filter, not a replacement for the public record. File only against the notice you downloaded from the government’s own site.