BMBF manages Germany’s science, technology and innovation portfolio, commanding a 2025 budget of €22.32 billion. Its grant architecture spans curiosity-driven research, industrial R &D and “public-interest tech.” At the micro end it bankrolls the Prototype Fund, a low-threshold open-source program run by the Open Knowledge Foundation that has seeded nearly 400 projects, including several spun out of the 2020 #WirVsVirus hackathon. Larger calls are nested in security frameworks: the 2024–29 Research for Civil Security plan dedicates a full action field to “better management of hybrid threats.” Flagship grantees include the noFake consortium (1.31 million €, 2021-24) led by Ruhr-Universität Bochum with CORRECTIV building a fact-checking community platform, NOTORIOUS, an ISD-Germany partnership mapping cross-platform disinformation patterns, and a project entitled “FactsforFriends” and funded through BMBF’s Prototype Fund. CORRECTIV’s own transparency report lists BMBF transfers of roughly €102 k (2022) and €164 k (2023) for noFake operations.

BMBF also finances new security-oriented programs such as Hybrid, Dynamo and the DESIVE² consortium, as well as successive MOTRA phases on radicalization monitoring. These projects extend its role in building federal research capacity around hybrid threats, informational risks and behavioral surveillance.