In the first half of the current fiscal year, the Pentagon’s experimental technology hub awarded $12.3 million in contracts.
The Defense Innovation unit Experimental (DIUx), established under former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, on April 18 announced its “agreement closure results” for the first two quarters of the 2017 fiscal year.
Thirteen agreements were awarded for a total of $12.3 million, bringing the total number of DIUx agreements to 25 for a total of $48.4 million through March 31. Based initially in Silicon Valley, Calif., DIUx also has outposts in Boston and Austin, Texas. It seeks to identify cutting-edge commercial technologies and rapidly transition them to military use.
“We have seen a significant increase in the number of companies across the nation seeking to work on customers’, the Services’ and the Combatant Commands’ toughest challenges,” Raj Shah, managing director of DIUx, said in a prepared statement. “Launching the Commercial Solutions Opening agreement has enabled much of this early success in a streamlined, flexible, and collaborative way.”
There are 20 additional projects in DIUx’s approved, near-term pipeline in five focus areas: autonomy, information technology, life sciences, space, and its newest area, artificial intelligence. Those projects account for approximately $175 million in DIUx- and customer-funded agreements.
DIUx co-invests with DoD customers to fund a range of projects including: personal aerial vehicles, knowledge management systems, multi-factor authentication and advanced analytics from satellite imagery. The majority of funding comes from DoD customers.
On average, for every $1 DIUx has put towards solutions, a DoD customer typically contributes $3.The private sector has invested at least $1.5 billion in DIUx portfolio companies.
Congress sought to arrest DIUx’s rapid expansion by including in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act a clause restricting it to 80 percent of its budget until the Pentagon submits a report on the “charter for and the use of funds to establish and expand DIUx.”
The Defense Department requested $45 million for DIUx in its fiscal 2017 budget request.