COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, Feb. 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eight small businesses will come together from across the United States for the Catalyst Accelerator’s cohort focused on Hybrid Data Movement.
The Catalyst Accelerator, powered by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV), was developed to promote technology advancement for the warfighter and guide technology transfer for the government to industry and vice versa. The US Space Force (USSF), Combatant Command operators, strategic decision makers, and tactical users need capabilities that can support hybrid data architectures to pull, store, move, analyze, correlate, display and push any kind of data to any user at any given time from any source in space or on earth. Therefore, the US Space Force, in conjunction with AFRL/RV, sought companies with innovative technologies to accelerate development of this hybrid data architecture and ensure the movement of the data happens for USSF in real time or near-real time.
The Hybrid Data Movement cohort will meet every other week for 3 months beginning March 1st. Each company will collaborate with subject matter experts, work with government and commercial Sherpas, complete an intensive customer discovery process, and receive funding sponsored by Microsoft. The cohort will conclude with a Demo Day on May 26th where they will pitch their technology to Government and Industry partners.
KiMar Gartman, Program Director for The Catalyst Accelerator, stated, “The Catalyst Accelerator team, along with 13 others from Industry and Government, spent the month of January choosing the top eight companies of those that applied for the Accelerator’s Spring cohort focused on Hybrid Data Movement. These companies have technologies that we believe will assist the Air Force and Space Force in developing a secure, scalable hybrid data environment so that users can manipulate diverse data sets from varied sources with greater speed and accuracy. We look forward to an amazing Accelerator session with the companies we have selected!” Capt Scott Hedden, Government Lead for The Catalyst Accelerator, expressed, “We are thoroughly impressed with the technology these small businesses can bring to the Government and Commercial sector, and I’m excited to be involved with the Catalyst Accelerator team helping deliver enhanced capabilities to the Warfighter!”
The Catalyst Accelerator team, with technical advisement from both Government and Industry experts, selected the following small businesses to participate in the upcoming Hybrid Data Movement cohort:
Archangel Lightworks (Orlando, Florida) is developing laser technology for the next generation of satellite communication. Their technology enables satellite operators to download 100x more data from orbit more quickly and more securely than radio frequency-based approaches. Their laser technology will massively increase the amount of valuable data downloadable from orbit – bringing more data for climate monitoring, agriculture, and many other Earth Observation use cases down to the people who are using it to improve life on Earth. Their vision is a future where disparate networks across space, air, ground and sea are securely connected using wireless laser links creating truly ubiquitous connectivity.
krtkl (“critical”) (San Francisco, California) provides high-reliability hardware and software solutions for ‘hard’ real-time applications in the robotics, sensing, and space industries. krtkl's mission is to build a smarter, more connected world by democratizing access to advanced technology. The company’s products have been deployed in thousands of mission-critical commercial and defense systems with demanding performance requirements and size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints. krtkl's high-bandwidth, radiation-tolerant space mesh router allows for rapid deployment of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. The hardware is front-end agnostic and ‘software reconfigurability’ enables on-orbit processing without additional SWaP or cost impacts.
Matchbook AI (Studio City, California) offers the only data solution that helps customers connect in real-time to fully mastered data that is trusted, enriched and always ready for business. This is where their transformational reference data as a service (RDaaS) platform creates incredible business value. RDaaS enables customers to connect on-demand, discover what matters most and manage third-party provider data, including Experian, Moodys and Dun & Bradstreet. By residing between a customer’s enterprise data systems and third-party data providers, RDaaS creates centralized data governance with distributed controls to empower companies with trusted data for impactful decision-making. Customers can connect in real-time to fully mastered data that is trusted, enriched and always ready for business.
Pixspan (Rockville, Maryland) provides the fastest and easiest data acceleration for moving large data files of any type and size on-premise and to, from, and within the Cloud, globally and on demand. Pixspan's software products accelerate and enhance Cloud and On-Premise workflows, offering unprecedented savings in time, storage and infrastructure costs. Pixspan offers Bit Exact Round Trip™ lossless compression of full-resolution images for speeding up transfers over limited bandwidth.
QuSecure (San Mateo, California) is the global leader in quantum cybersecurity. They’re using the threat of quantum attacks as a catalyst to fix the foundation of digital infrastructure - by putting security first, they assure private and safe communication, anytime, anywhere, on any device. Their software-based solution combines zero-trust endpoint management, unbreakable quantum keys, ultra-fast transport protocols, and Legacy Protocol Switching to deliver unparalleled end-to-end security on earth and in space. QuSecure’s vision is to create an exceptionally secure world through post-quantum cryptography.
Spectronn (Holmdel, New Jersey) has a software platform that concurrently and in real-time optimizes heterogeneous data networking and computing for resilient and low-latency situational awareness. It virtually combines all available networking and computing assets in space and on earth to deliver smart data (satellite, UAV, SAR, RADAR, CCTV, RF, and IoT sensors) collection, storage, sharing, and analytics. AVA, their human-centered AI engine combines deep machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing to analyze the collected data for visual storytelling and Q&A. These integrated capabilities deliver clear, real-time intelligence to first responders, warfighters, and commercial stakeholders, without cognitively overloading them – everything they need and nothing they do not.
Swiss Vault (Princeton, New Jersey) has re-imagined the data storage platform with innovative Software & Hardware. The small form-factor and easy to use design can be utilized from Edge networks to massive scale up data centers, and the platform is 10X more energy efficient than existing data servers. Data also has a significant environmental impact due to the short lifespan of equipment and resulting electronic waste. Swiss Vault systems are long-lasting, modular, durable, and purposely built for the Circular Economy. With all of these features, Swiss Vault’s mission is to provide technology to organizations for better, economical, resilient and environmentally sustainable, data management.
TurnRock Labs (Seattle, Washington) has a mission is to make autonomy affordable for everyone. TurnRock seeks to revolutionize the world of general-purpose robotics by leveraging human brainpower to create more adaptable, resilient, and future proofed systems. They believe that the next generation of coordinated autonomy will depend on faster and more effective real-time integration of software intelligent agents and the humans who operate them. TurnRock is developing the Dynamic Multi-Echelon Agent Control (DMAC) platform to provide real-time integration and simulation capabilities for digital twin models to inform decision making.
About Catalyst Accelerator
The Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate and United States Space Force’s Catalyst Accelerator is a NewSpace-focused defense and national security industry accelerator, headquartered on the Catalyst Campus for Technology and Innovation (CCTI) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. CCTI is a collaborative ecosystem where industry, small business, entrepreneurs, startups, government, academia, and investors intersect with Colorado’s aerospace and defense industry to create community, spark innovation, and stimulate business growth. The Catalyst Accelerator is a collaborative program hosted by Catalyst Campus for Technology and Innovation (CCTI, a Colorado 501(c)3) in partnership with the United States Space Force, and the Air Force Research Laboratory to provide a robust, mentor-driven curriculum for accelerator teams.
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