pay one of your friends through the nose to give them said tech.
Given that my goal right now involves raising the funds to get the Skylaxians into the Federation:
No.
I need 75
freaking thousand credit for that. OTOH I have 45,000,000* voting proxies with the Peltians and nothing to spend it on. Their deals are like "10 proxies" or "50 proxies" and "oh by the way, we like you more too, so have 15 back." Before I even started manipulating them I had 3000 proxies and I don't even think I've
spent half that many despite colonizing all of their moons trying to find a trade deal between them and the Andors (ended up paying off the Boarines to get the respecive like-values above 50--the personal interference cap).
Credit is actually really hard to come by. Despite having as much as I need for the usual tasks (hiring security--which hasn't helped in the slightest--and scientists) income is incredibly slow. I just spent 60 months constructing fleet ships for a race and netted just over 5 grand. I can't find anything that pays better (well yes, in terms of game-time blowing up ships pays more, but per-real-time-minute: no).
*Ok, ok, only 45 thousand.