Ensuring AI leadership with engagement, collaboration & investment
By Matt Calderone, Chief Financial Officer
AI has been the biggest technology topic this year. It’s at the center of our national security, infrastructure, workforce, and innovation ecosystems. The White House’s AI Action Plan emphasized the global strategic importance of American AI leadership. It’s clear that AI is the biggest tech wave of the next few decades and that the promise and capabilities of this tech have captured our collective imagination.
Booz Allen has been preparing for this moment since 2014. We knew the potential impact AI would have on everything from defense tech and public safety to critical mineral discovery and the space domain. We invested in ourselves and became the leading provider of AI to the federal government.
We also broadened the aperture of how Booz Allen views tech and found ways to use this wider field of vision to ensure American AI leadership. The applications for AI may well be limitless, and we are eager to combine our passion for bringing the best tech to market and to mission while pushing the boundaries of discovery.
Our perspective has driven the three focus areas that have helped us stay ahead of the surge in demand: engagement with the tech ecosystem, collaboration with commercial tech companies, and investments that fueled promising solutions.
Tech Partnerships
First, we knew no one company could drive AI innovation alone, which is why we’ve spent decades deeply engaging with companies that share our commercial-first approach. We’ve worked with leading companies—including NVIDIA, Meta, and Databricks—and we’ve delved into the many applications for AI, as you saw in the article “Agentic Software Development Decoded: Key Lessons on Accelerating Development with AI.”
We’ve also made investments in promising tech with real-world applications. Booz Allen Ventures supported Reality Defender and their development of AI tools that combat identity-based fraud and deep fakes. Our company has a longstanding and robust relationship with Shield AI, including combining our mission engineering expertise with their Hivemind platform to advance autonomy in defense tech. There are many ways AI can be applied—next-generation communications networks, new breakthroughs in intelligence gathering, and simulations of the physical world—and we’re committed to the partnerships that fuel that innovation.
“Looking ahead, Booz Allen plans to take these efforts further and faster than ever before. In July, we announced that we are increasing our corporate ventures commitment to $300 million.”
Commercial Collaboration
Next, we’ve helped companies of all sizes build, develop, and implement faster. We know that co-creation and collaboration bring greater speed to outcomes, and we’re working with everyone from startups to hyperscalers. Combining Booz Allen tech and expertise with that of emerging tech companies has led to game-changing, positive impacts for our customers—and for the vital missions they serve.
Sometimes we come across exceptional tech that’s ready for immediate implementation, such as Hidden Layer’s cybersecurity platform for AI/ML models. Other times, the tech needs to be tuned or combined with other solutions to get it ready for delivery. That’s when we open our doors, share our tech talent and mission insights, and leverage our intellectual property to complement third-party offerings. Working collectively means that we innovate faster, strengthen the entire ecosystem, and get the right tech into the hands of those who need it most.
Booz Allen Ventures
Finally, in some cases, we bring in our investment dollars to fuel companies with great promise. Booz Allen Ventures uncovers these companies, helps them mature their offerings for new markets, and accelerates their solutions’ time to impact. We currently have 17 companies in that program, and we’re seeing great results. We’re helping Albedo get their very low earth orbit satellites into space, and those satellites will provide new sources of ultra-high resolution commercial imagery. We’re also working with Second Front to get their DevSecOps platform into national security missions. Over time, we build on those relationships; we just expanded our relationship with SEEQC to use their chipsets in quantum software development.
Looking ahead, Booz Allen plans to take these efforts further and faster than ever before. In July, we announced that we are increasing our corporate ventures commitment to $300 million. We’ll invest in crucial areas like AI, cyber, quantum, defense, and deep tech while also exploring opportunities in more specific priority areas, such as robotics, energy resilience, and reindustrialization. We’re also leveraging our strong relationships and thinking in a more expansive way about how we can engage with the venture-backed tech ecosystem. As we invest alongside leading companies and expand our awareness of the amazing tech that will be coming to market over the next decade, we’re looking for ways to combine our efforts and deliver the tech superiority that keeps America safe and prosperous.
America needs to use new technology to solve our collective challenges and ensure our leadership on the global stage. The mission is expanding, and it’s our responsibility to build, develop, and deliver solutions that matter. Our part in that mission is to keep innovating at the edge of this ever-evolving tech landscape and keep partnering across the ecosystem. That is how we will ensure that our company, our partners, and our nation thrive.
