Summer Myatt
LMI is entering a new era of growth. According to CEO Doug Wagoner, LMI is refining its strategy, redefining its lines of business and focusing on expanding its core capabilities organically and through M&A in 2024.
In a new video interview with Executive Mosaic, Wagoner shared exclusive insights into LMI’s next phase, the company’s emerging technology priorities and new market opportunities.
How AI Will Continue to Shape the GovCon Landscape
Wagoner, a five-time Wash100 Award winner, shared that artificial intelligence is one of the most impactful technologies of our time, and it’s something LMI is paying close attention to as it develops.
“[With] AI, the adoption rate is much, much quicker than I ever anticipated it was going to be,” he shared with Executive Mosaic’s video reporter Summer Myatt. “I think the first time I heard or saw ChatGPT, which is really the primary generative AI tool that folks talk about, was probably the end of ‘22. And then some of my engineers, my data scientists started playing with it in the spring of ‘23. By the end of summer ‘23, we had our first solution, LIGER. And I think by the end of that year, we were selling our solution, our gen AI solution to customers.”
While the adoption rate of such a new technology can be “somewhat scary” to people, Wagoner said it reveals just how consequential a “change agent” AI will continue to be across the government landscape.
The Future of Space Innovation
Space, Wagoner said, is on par with AI as being an area of truly monumental change, innovation and impact in the GovCon market. In the past, access to space and the cost of launch have been prohibitive to space innovation. But now, especially with commercial space companies like SpaceX on the scene, access to space is increasing and the cost of launch is lowering.
“It’s really enabled more access to space at a much, much, much lower cost,” he said of the rise of commercial launch companies. “There’s just a lot of things you can do in space that you can’t do terrestrially. The cost of certain activities overall will come down doing it from space versus terrestrially.”
LMI has been in the space business, but in the past, the company has supported the back office side of the industry. Now, LMI is moving more toward the “mission side” of space and doing so through acquisitions that expand the company’s capabilities and market access.
“We were able to acquire Synaptech, which is based in Colorado Springs. Space Force is their primary customer. And that really enabled us to do work for them such as wargaming, such as future force design. We really brought credibility with those activities so that we can start doing other things across Space Force, Space Command, commercial space and civilian space,” said Wagoner.
Watch Doug Wagoner’s full video interview for the latest information on AI, space trends, LMI’s company outlook and more.
