Well, it looks like the Pentagon might finally be well and truly getting on the AI bandwagon.
This morning, AI-for-defense startup Striveworks announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’ve scored a $70M multi-year enterprise agreement (EA) with the DoD (through the US Army) to deploy their flagship Chariot Core software across the Department.
That means that the company will now provide “up to 950,000 eligible defense personnel with enterprise-level access to its technology over a two-year period.” CEO Jim Rebesco told Tectonic that the Army has already started executing contracts under the agreement.
Watch out, operators. (More) chatbots are coming soon to a theater near you.
Make it work: Striveworks—like many of the companies we’ve covered lately, tbh—is another one of those nuts-and-bolts giants, but on the software side of the house.
- The company was founded back in 2018 by Rebesco, Craig Desjardins, Eric Korman, and Tony Manganiello out of Austin, TX.
- Their mandate is pretty straightforward: The company builds software that helps commercially available stuff (like ChatGPT) to the military—the main product that does that is called Chariot Core.
- And it’s not just a plug-and-play sort of situation—the company deploys, manages, and maintains AI models throughout their life cycle. “[Chariot] manages the life cycle of AI models, everything from building them, to bringing them in, to monitoring them in production, to increasingly (with the proliferation of agentic AI) putting guardrails…around those agentic pieces,” Rebesco told Tectonic.
- Think of Striveworks less as an AI company like OpenAI and more as the tool that makes ChatGPT work in super-messy, super-high-stakes situations. “Whenever you need AI to work, our platform makes it work,” Rebesco said.
“Whether it’s the Maven smart system, or an Intel application, or a logistics application, or anything else in between, you’ve got the ability to plug world-class AI models into [Chariot],” he added.
Plus, because it’s been built specifically for government use, users “get an experience that’s a lot richer than a chatbot,” Rebesco said. “You can say, ‘I need you to execute full tasks for me. I need you to execute logistics tasks, resupply tasks, call for fires, [or] process intelligence.’”
Intel inside: Rebesco compared the software to an Intel chip back in the early 2000s.
“You had that [Intel inside] sticker and nobody ever ripped open their laptop to see the CPU, but it was the thing that made the computer work,” he said. “That’s like our relationship with this stuff. We enable the ability to connect these AI models with these mission-critical workflows.”
Hit the ceiling: Now lest you think that Striveworks is pocketing that cool $70M right now—they’re not, that’s not how EAs work.
- Army Contracting Command has struck a deal with the company, and now the whole Pentagon can use it. “[The EA] enables anybody in the DoW to come to us with pre-negotiated prices, pre-negotiated discounts, and get the product directly from us. They don’t have to pay overhead, they don’t have to hunt for contracting vehicles,” Rebesco said.
- The Pentagon has basically said it will buy up to $70M worth of Striveworks products and services in the next two years. It’s the same setup that Palantir ($10B over 10 years) and Anduril ($20B over 10 years) have with the Army.
- But Rebesco is clear-eyed about that. “I think there’s always a little bit of confusion bordering on cynicism when IDIQ-type vehicles get thrown around,” he said. But to Striveworks, it’s a pretty clear signal that the Army is trying to change the way it adopts tech.
“It’s really cool to see how the Army is taking their messaging around, ‘We want to move faster. We want to…be much more lightweight and efficient in our contracting and be able to keep pace with…not just the speed of technology, but also…the way things are evolving on the battlefield.”