The US Navy tells startups more, “We want you”

While the CEO of Silicon Valley, such as those from Palantir, Meta and Openai, top the headlines of the BRUNELO CUCINLLI Army reserve costumeThere was a quieter shift in the US Navy.

how? Well, Justin Vanteli, chief technology official in the navy, says that he has spent two and a half years the past two years focusing on cutting the red tape and lengthy purchase courses that made work with the army a nightmare for startups. Efforts are a less clear but more virtual reformulation, as the government moves faster and is more intelligent about where it is committed to dollars.

“We are more open to business and partnerships more than we were before,” told Techcrunch in an interview with Zoom recently. “We are humble and we are listening to more than before, and we realize that if the organization shows us how we can do different businesses, we want to be a partnership.”

At the present time, many of these partnerships are facilitated by what the vanity group calls a group of innovation in the navy, a series of frameworks and tools that aim to bridge the so -called valley with death, as promising technology dies on its way from the initial model to production. He said: “Your grandfather’s government had a pasta plan for how to enter.” “It is now suppression, and we say, if you can show that you have great results, we want to appoint you as an institutional service.”

In one modern cases, the navy moved from a proposal request (RFP) to experimental publishing in less than six months with VIA, eight -year -old Somerville, Somerville, the start of the cybersecurity its headquarters that help major organizations to protect sensitive data and digital identities through, in part, decentralization, which means that the data has not been stored in one of the central points that can be penetrated. (Another VIA customer is the American Air Force.)

The navy’s new approach works on what the “horizon” model calls, which has been borrowed and adapted from the MCKINSEY innovation framework. Companies are transmitted through three stages: evaluation, organized experimentation, and expansion to institutions services. Vanilene says that the main difference in traditional government contract is that the navy is now leading problems instead of pre -determined solutions.

“Instead of selecting,” hey, we would like to solve this problem in a way that we always had, “we only say that we have a problem, who wants to solve this, and how will you solve it?” Vante said.

Vanily motivated marine technology reform is personal. Originally, a scholarship in the Air Force is studying electrical engineering, was excluded from military service due to the lung problem. He is determined to serve anyway, he chose to provide the navy to the private sector for more than 20 years because he “wanted to be around people wearing a military uniform.” Since then, his career has spread to the roles through defense, intelligence, DarPa and open sources initiatives, before returning to the Ministry of Navy.

The change that supervises it is to open the doors for companies that had not previously thought about government work and may have believed that it was a waste of time to an attempt. For example, a single competition that passes through the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), where the navy expected a handful of offers to challenge specialized cybersecurity but received nearly 100 responses – many companies that had not worked with the Ministry of Defense before but they were already similar problems in the private sector.

Vanteli says his team has completely documented dozens of success stories, including a story where a startup backed by the automation automation project for pressure by accumulating the bill for two years in just two weeks. Another example involves converting network improvements to a aircraft carrier that provided 5,000 hours of sailors in the first month alone.

“This not only changed their availability, but not their morale, Esprit de Corps, how long they can spend other tasks,” Vanteli pointed out, explaining that the preserved time is one of the five standards that the navy uses to measure the success of a pilot program. The other four are the operational flexibility, the cost per user, the ability to adapt, and the user experience.

As for the navy at the present time, Vanteli has identified many high priority areas, including artificial intelligence, as the service is actively speaking with the difference. For beginners, the naval wants to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence in order to exceed the cases of basic artificial intelligence in more applications for everything starting with employee management and employee management to data processing on ships. GPS was also martyred “Alternative”, explaining that the navy quickly adopts mobility programs and alternative accuracy timing, especially to integrate with unmanned systems. He stated, “Update of the old system,” saying that some of the aging techniques that the navy aspire to update include the infrastructure for air control and ship -based systems.

So how much money is looking to work every year? Vanteli said he was not free to provide specific budget breakdowns, but he said that the navy currently allocated the percentage of the number one of the starting and commercial technology against the traditional defense contractors-a balance that is expected to develop significantly with the continuation of AI.

For the most common reason for the failure of promising techniques at the trial, he said it is not necessarily due to technical deficiencies. Instead, he said, the navy is working on long budget courses, and if it does not replace the new solution or “stop” an existing system, funding becomes a problem.

“If we get the benefit and we measure this benefit, but there is no money (access to startup) in a year and a half – this is a really bad story for their investors and users,” Vante explained. “Sometimes a zero game.

During our call, we also asked a vanilla if the Trump administration’s first “American” policies affect these operations in any way. Vanteli answered that the current focus on local manufacturing is well compatible with the “flexibility” goals of the navy (referred to digital twins, additional manufacturing, and the site’s production capabilities that can reduce the consequences of the supply chain).

In both cases, the marine message for project owners and investors is clearly clearly that it is a real alternative to traditional commercial markets, and this appears to be the stadium that is gaining strength in the Silicon Valley, where there is an increasing acceptance of partnership with the American government.

Meta Andrew Busworth It was recently noticed in the last Bloomberg event In San Francisco: “There is a much stronger national support than I think people give credit in the Silicon Valley.”

Since industrial monitors have long been witnessing, it is a noticeable change in the most skeptical situation that has described many of the valley in previous years.

Now, the vanilla hopes to attract more this interest in the navy specifically. “I would like to invite anyone who wants to serve the biggest task of the solution to circumvent and join us on this trip,” Techcrunch told Techcrunch.

If you are interested in hearing our full conversation with Fanelli, you can check this here.