Cultivating an Innovation Ecosystem

Technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and next-generation networking are deeply transforming our industry and our clients' missions. Leveraging over a century of service, Booz Allen's technical differentiation is rooted in integrating mission-first solutions that are trusted, equitable, and built to scale in alignment with U.S. national security interests and the needs of the American public.

To accelerate mission-critical outcomes for the public sector with agility, reach, speed, and efficiency, Booz Allen looks for innovative ways to integrate emerging technologies with client needs through diverse industry partnerships and corporate venture capital investments. This requires being nimble, prioritizing scale, and minimizing time, cost, and risk, all while staying aligned with our purpose and values.

For over a decade, we have collaborated with startups to apply leading-edge technology solutions to U.S. federal government missions, transforming government operations and improving programs that create significant public benefits. With the rapid pace at which technology solutions and use cases emerge, government leaders must adopt or adapt quickly. We enable faster application of emerging solutions to U.S. federal government missions by identifying the most promising commercial technologies in the marketplace, assessing them for our clients, and supporting their deployment within U.S. federal government systems.

Building DOD's Largest-Ever Digital Twin of Its Kind

Digital twins are technically realistic replicas of systems, processes, or objects. They work by directly connecting to, or twinning with, their physical counterparts through continuously updated data feeds. Digital twins have the power to help model global issues, but there are significant complexities to think about, from data ingestion through visualization and usability.

After a major hurricane hit Tyndall Air Force Base, causing $5 billion in damage, the U.S. Air Force turned to Booz Allen and Unity to rebuild the base as an “Installation of the Future”—a largest-of-its-kind digital twin that dramatically streamlines the installation's design, planning, operations, and sustainment.

The redesign of Tyndall required leading-edge digital, artificial intelligence (AI), and engineering capabilities across the solution lifecycle, from design and construction to maintenance and operations. Today, the digital twin can accurately visualize the installation in extended reality while preserving the engineering and technical data underpinning every object in the digital environment. Tyndall is accessing instant data insights continuously delivered by a massive, interconnected, systems-of-systems platform that has already ingested massive amounts of information for analysis and use.

In the future, we look forward to bringing the installation-scale solution produced through this project to enterprises across DOD to enable applications for digital twins that run at massive scale.

Technology Scouting and Investment

Our Technology Scouting team has deep relationships that provide our clients early access to emerging solutions through our vast network of venture capitalists, startups, incubators, and partners. Every year, the Technology Scouting team identifies and vets over 1,000 dual-use startups for the U.S. government. Our work has unlocked the value of innovative commercial startups and dual-use solutions for the U.S. federal government, enabling greater mission impact and ultimately affecting the lives of people globally.

Booz Allen Ventures, an early stage $100 million strategic investment fund, officially launched in July 2022. It deepens our commitment to integrating strategic and emerging technologies that differentiate Booz Allen solutions, accelerate clients' access to these types of technologies, and ultimately transform how our clients carry out their critical missions. Booz Allen Ventures is a startup- and founder-friendly fund that is closely aligned to our VoLT strategy, creating opportunities to deploy capital in a timeframe that leapfrogs typical development cycles and delivers advanced capabilities into the hands of our clients faster. The fund is focused on three strategic platforms: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital battlespace. Booz Allen Ventures has an investment committee comprised of Booz Allen executives who evaluate potential investment opportunities and make the investment decisions. See our website to learn more about Booz Allen Ventures.

Partnerships

Society's greatest challenges are not solved in a single lab or studio. To address the complex needs of U.S. government missions, we curate a partnership ecosystem of diverse technology partners that includes Silicon Valley startups, Fortune 500 firms, specialized small- and medium-sized companies, and veteran-, women-, and minority-owned businesses. From category leaders in digital and immersive to cloud and artificial intelligence, the range of the partnership ecosystem empowers us to reach across industries to design trusted mission systems with boundary-pushing, best-in-class components.

Our partnership ecosystem aligns client demand signals to the external technology ecosystem from startups to large commercial technology companies. Through relationships in our expanding ecosystem, we are codeveloping solutions that drive speed to market in emerging areas, and industry leaders have praised our commitment to jointly developing and delivering mission solutions.

For example, Booz Allen is partnering with Unity, a leading platform for real-time 3D content, to bring the power of digital twins to U.S. federal government agencies securely, rapidly, and at scale. Blending Booz Allen's mission expertise with Unity's 3D engine technology, we are creating a government-customized digital twin solution. We built the platform by bringing together Unity's suite of products with Booz Allen's digital twin engineering baselines and accelerators. Through our partnership, we're speeding up deployment for clients while reducing risk. To learn more about Booz Allen's partnership ecosystem and how we are advancing client missions, see our website.

Investing in Dual-Use Technologies

Booz Allen Ventures made a strategic investment in Reveal Technology, Inc. in FY23. Reveal's Farsight software platform provides special operators and squads in high-risk environments with actionable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities at the unit level—without the need for network connectivity and on timelines measured in minutes and seconds, not hours and days. We are committed to investing in strategic, defense-first, dual-use technologies that help speed up the adoption of advanced commercial technologies for public sector missions. Beyond special operations, there is future potential to apply Reveal's technology to such mission-critical use cases as natural disaster response, public safety crises, maritime search and rescue, and more.