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Abstract We continue the program of proving circuit lower bounds via circuit satisfiability algorithms. So far, this program has yielded several concrete results, proving that functions in$$\mathsf {Quasi}\text {-}\mathsf {NP} = \mathsf {NTIME}[n^{(\log n)^{O(1)}}]$$ $\mathrm{Quasi}-\mathrm{NP}=\mathrm{NTIME}\left[n^{{\left(\log n\right)}^{O\left(1\right)}}\right]$and other complexity classes do not have small circuits (in the worst case and/or on average) from various circuit classes$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$, by showing that$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$admits non-trivial satisfiability and/or#SAT algorithms which beat exhaustive search by a minor amount. In this paper, we present a new strong lower bound consequence of having a non-trivial#SAT algorithm for a circuit class$${\mathcal C}$$ $C$. Say that a symmetric Boolean functionf(x₁,…,x_n) issparseif it outputs 1 onO(1) values of$${\sum }_{i} x_{i}$$ ${\sum }_i{x}_i$. We show that for every sparsef, and for all “typical”$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$, faster#SAT algorithms for$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$circuits imply lower bounds against the circuit class$$f \circ \mathcal { C}$$ $f\circ C$, which may bestrongerthan$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$itself. In particular:#SAT algorithms forn^k-size$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$-circuits running in 2ⁿ/n^ktime (for allk) implyNEXPdoes not have$$(f \circ \mathcal { C})$$ $(f\circ C)$-circuits of polynomial size.#SAT algorithms for$$2^{n^{{\varepsilon }}}$$ $2^{n^{\epsilon }}$-size$$\mathcal { C}$$ $C$-circuits running in$$2^{n-n^{{\varepsilon }}}$$ $2^{n-n^{\epsilon }}$time (for someε> 0) implyQuasi-NPdoes not have$$(f \circ \mathcal { C})$$ $(f\circ C)$-circuits of polynomial size. Applying#SAT algorithms from the literature, one immediate corollary of our results is thatQuasi-NPdoes not haveEMAJ∘ACC⁰∘THRcircuits of polynomial size, whereEMAJis the “exact majority” function, improving previous lower bounds againstACC⁰[Williams JACM’14] andACC⁰∘THR[Williams STOC’14], [Murray-Williams STOC’18]. This is the first nontrivial lower bound against such a circuit class.