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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected five top technology accelerators from across the nation as DARPA Commercial Accelerators to facilitate rapid commercialisation and scale of DARPA-funded technologies.
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DARPA’s Commercial Accelerators have been announced as part of the DARPA Commercial Strategy to lead the agency’s efforts to bring top business expertise and commercial entrepreneurial talent to DARPA performers.
DARPA chief of commercial strategy Sha-Chelle Manning said, “DARPA’s mission remains steadfast in pushing the boundaries of science and technology to prevent and create technological surprise.”
The regional commercial accelerators are:
- Capital Factory, based in Austin, Texas.
- CIMIT, based out of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
- FedTech (Hyperion Technologies LLC), based in Arlington, Virginia.
- SRI International, based in Menlo Park, California.
- Wireless Research Center of North Carolina, based in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
The core mission of DARPA’s Commercial Strategy is to prevent adversarial influence in DARPA-funded technologies, so they remain accessible and available to the United States and its allies.
DARPA’s Commercial Accelerators will work with qualified DARPA-funded companies developing early-stage technologies with the potential for significant impact to:
- Access regional top-tier commercial and entrepreneurial talent and investor networks.
- Connect DARPA performers with non-adversarial private investment capital and US corporations.
- Provide additional training, mentoring, coaching, techno-economic market mapping, financial analysis, deal sourcing, and early-stage company building (pre-seed).
- Leverage unique regional capabilities – including universities, labs, and demonstration sites – with domain expertise relevant to both Department of Defense acquisition and commercialisation.
- Develop strategies and approaches to de-risk the highest market inefficiencies and business risk to ensure DARPA-funded technologies can be scaled rapidly for economic and national security.
The Commercial Strategy team focuses on reducing the highest business risks to enable defence and commercial sectors to scale DARPA technologies faster, more efficiently, and with maximum impact for national and economic security.
“With these regional accelerators, we can ensure more DARPA-funded teams can recruit top talent, develop robust go-to-market strategies, raise capital, and scale operations, turning groundbreaking technology into high value for national, economic, and societal impact,” Manning said.
DARPA Commercial Accelerators will enhance and scale Commercial Strategy’s successful Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative (EEI) pilot program. The EEI program provides funding to connect a performer’s technical team with commercialisation experts.
Since 2022, the EEI program has helped DARPA performers raise over US$1 billion (AU$1.489 billion) in private investment capital and launch over 21 new products, services, and capabilities, in addition to this, US corporations have invested US$639 million (AU$952.0 million) in acquisition of DARPA early-stage technologies.
