The five companies were awarded $25 million in contracts over three years, placing them at the center of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's mission to keep the military's innovation engine running.
As such, the size of the contracts is not exhaustive of their scope and specifications. DARPA announced Thursday that it has enrolled the companies as commercial accelerators to help speed the commercialization and scale of technologies funded by the agency.
Capital Factory, CIMIT, FedTech, SRI International and the Wireless Research Center will collaborate with eligible DARPA-funded companies developing early-stage technologies that DARPA sees as potentially having high impact.
This five-person Prime group will be responsible for connecting the companies they work with to a network of entrepreneurial talent and investors, providing additional mentorship and other early-stage company-building support, and developing strategies to enable rapid scaling of their technologies.
DARPA also directed awardees to identify what market inefficiencies and business risks stand in the way of bringing these technologies to the forefront of our economy and national security.
DARPA received a total of 39 bids for the contract, the Defense Department said in an award summary Thursday.
