Booz Allen Ventures Marks Anniversary with Investment

Since its inception, Booz Allen Ventures has been instrumental in propelling early-stage dual-use startups towards scalable success and bringing critical technology to the U.S. government and Department of Defense (DOD).

Now, as Booz Allen Ventures commemorates two years of transformative early-stage technology investing, we share some of the biggest impacts and milestones on this journey of fostering innovation and advancing groundbreaking technologies.  

Recent Booz Allen Ventures strategic investments support the firm’s efforts to accelerate US space capabilities with the power of data:

• Quindar: Aligned with its two-year anniversary, Booz Allen Ventures announced its tenth overall investment in Quindar, an early-stage commercial space technology company focused on automating satellite operations, opening the door to replace outdated ground systems with new, proliferated, commercially developed AI-enabled technologies.   
• Albedo: Announced at Booz Allen’s AI + Space Summit, Albedo provides ultra-high resolution visible and infrared commercial imagery from space from satellites in very low Earth orbit (VLEO).  

Together, the Quindar and Albedo investments plot a course for Booz Allen’s leadership as an integrator and data solutions provider for the space domain.

As a leading provider of AI to the US federal government, Booz Allen understands the criticality of selecting the right tech for specific missions. Each AI-focused startup that Booz Allen Ventures has invested in brings different core slices of AI support to the forefront: AI security, responsible AI, data standardization for AI actioning, and more.  

• Latent AI: The very first Booz Allen Ventures investment is helping transform the federal government’s ability to deploy AI capabilities on compute and power-constrained devices even when disconnected from the cloud. Nearly 90% of new tech startups don’t make it through the period between prototyping a new solution and its successful implementation, and startups supporting the public sector, like Latent AI, face more obstacles than most. Jags Kandasamy and Sek Chai, the CEO and CTO of Latent AI (respectively), recently shared their experience surviving the “valley of death” in Booz Allen’s  Velocity Magazine.
• RAIC Labs (formerly Synthetaic): Known as the company that identified and tracked a Chinese spy balloon, RAIC Labs’ Rapid Automation Image Categorization (RAIC) tool automates the analysis of large, unstructured datasets so you can train and deploy AI models radically faster than traditional approaches. This enables non-technical teams to build and run classification and detection models in minutes without labeled data.  
• HiddenLayer: Providing advanced protection for AI missions against adversarial attacks, this investment portfolio company beat more than 3,000 competitors to be named the “Most Innovative Startup” at the 2023 RSA Conference.  HiddenLayer’s award coincided with the stand-up of Booz Allen’s  AI Security capability. In a recent announcement from Microsoft, HiddenLayer was selected as the key AI security solution for the Microsoft AI Studio catalog curated by Azure AI.
• Credo AI: As the adoption of AI continues to grow throughout the government, Booz Allen partnered with AI governance leader Credo AI to support the public sector’s adoption and deployment of AI in ways that are responsible, transparent, secure, and explainable. Since partnering, Booz Allen and Credo AI have shown up together at Credo AI’s Global Responsible AI Summit, at the Booz Allen-hosted panel “The Age of Principled AI,” and in the media on the need for responsible AI. The two firms also joined forces at SCSP to unveil our joint OMB offering and through joint policy work amid a rapidly evolving regulatory environment and the recent Executive Order on Responsible AI. 

Booz Allen Ventures’ portfolio includes targeted strategic investments that not only bring the right emerging technology to the mission but also secure, standardized solutions rooted in cybersecurity best practices that chart a course to modernize and accelerate how the government adopts new technology: 

• Hidden Level: Unmanned aerial systems (UAS), such as drones, are a growing threat in the air, land, and sea. Specializing in Counter-UAS, Hidden Level brings its cutting-edge proprietary technology to achieve spectrum dominance in airspace monitoring and detection.
• Shift5: Key to protecting critical infrastructure that moves, Shift5 liberates serial bus data from the DOD, aerospace, rail, and maritime platforms, enabling operators to move from data to decisions quickly and confidently, supporting data democratization efforts, while boosting fleet readiness, resilience, and survivability. Booz Allen and Shift5 recently deepened their relationship with a focus on cybersecurity and predictive maintenance solutions with Shift5’s observability capabilities. 
• Second Front Systems: The authority to operate (ATO) process for commercial technology in the federal government is an age-old issue that 2F is tackling head on to accelerate the delivery of mission-critical software solutions. 2F recently hosted the Offset Symposium in Washington DC, bringing together Booz Allen and industry thought leaders from both private and public sectors to foster dialogue about the role of innovation in national security and best practices in getting key tech into the hands of users soonest. 
• Reveal Technology: Booz Allen’s investment in Reveal and its edge computing capabilities strengthened the firm’s Digital Battlespace platform and resulted in the co-creation of a battlefield awareness tool called EdgeAware. Reveal’s growing portfolio of edge-optimized software products allows tactical users to rapidly gain and maintain decision dominance at the tactical edge without needing network connectivity or direct support from higher headquarters. Its products deliver rapid geospatial and human identity data analytics in conjunction with robotics platforms.

“Our country needs to innovate faster than ever to supply and support critical missions and to address geopolitical drivers and rising threats. Yesterday's technology and mindsets are not going to cut it,” said Brian MacCarthy,  managing partner, Booz Allen Ventures. “The investment efforts through our venture capital fund allow us to have a stake in the most cutting-edge technology, and to build our own IP on top of that technology and deploy down range into the most critical missions across the US government.”