Charles Lyons-Burt
Octo has secured a spot on the five-year, $249 million blanket purchase agreement from the Department of Defense to support the test and evaluation efforts of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.
The BPA tasks Octo with aiding JAIC T&E endeavors by administering test technology and tools for various AI programs, as well as expanding the DOD’s portfolio of technologies, the Reston, Virginia-based firm said Tuesday.
“Octo could not be more excited to be among those chosen to advance the JAIC’s mission of bringing safe, effective AI into the hands of the women and men who protect our country,” commented Octo CEO Mehul Sanghani.
With the multi-award contract, Octo joins organizations helping the JAIC T&E initiative create and implement AI experimentation tactics, tools and results-driven reference points. They will also promote the JAIC’s mission of introducing AI services across the DOD, offering the architecture, resources and technical guidance that users need to effectively utilize the new technologies.
Octo will specifically focus on broadening the DOD’s arsenal to encompass burgeoning machine learning, deep learning and neural network strategies. In addition, the BPA will require the company to confirm and assess technologies currently in use in order to ensure mission success.
Rob Albritton, senior director of the AI Center of Excellence at Octo, explained the company has proved its AI capabilities with its contributions to the U.S. Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System program as well as the strides it has made at its oLabs research and development center.
Albritton said the firm’s work at JAIC will produce “technology that far exceeds the expectations of our Warfighters and makes them even more effective than they are today.”
The work under the JAIC BPA is aimed to intensify Octo’s efforts to support defense community needs and modernize materials for warfighters.
JAIC’s award follows an Air Force contract won by Octo in November for information technology development and cloud computing facilitation. The company will complete this work at Kessel Run with their collaborator Raft.
