BlueFoot Awarded $1.5M Phase II SBIR Contracts from the U.S. Air Force to Automate Technology Due Diligence Aligned with SBIR Reauthorization Bill
U.S. Air Force will use BlueFoot’s market intelligence platform that combines patent, financial, and M&A data to evaluate competitive technological capabilities by leveraging patent analysis and foreign influence assessments.
BlueFoot Inc. has been awarded $1.5M in contracts from the U.S. Air Force under the AFWERX Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II program. AFWERX, a Technology Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the innovation arm of the Department of Air Force, aims to accelerate agile and affordable transitions of dual-use capabilities.
BlueFoot provides an AI software platform for analyzing patent, financial, and M&A data in technology domains and industries at the company and country level. Under the Air Force contracts, BlueFoot’s AI solution will rate and compare global technological and patent strength across companies, countries, and industries. Using BlueFoot, the Air Force can gain enhanced situational awareness of commercial and potentially adversarial activities in defense-critical technology domains.
Further, BlueFoot will help timely detect and communicate foreign influence risks based on geographical and temporal indicators related to commercial entities and their relevant patents. Early notification of these activities will enable superior awareness to act against near-peer technological advances and may provide further insight into IP theft by adversarial nations.
Recently, Congress passed the SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022 which funds the programs through 2025. The bill also requires that federal agencies engage in due diligence programs that include both patent analysis and foreign influence reports as part of SBIR and STTR programs. For further information about how BlueFoot can help federal agencies with risk-based patent analysis and foreign influence reports, please visit www.bluefoot.ai.
About SBIR
AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the SBIR process in an attempt to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now with topic AF211-DCSO1, the Air Force has begun offering 'Special' SBIR topics that are faster, leaner, and open to a broader range of solutions. For more information, please visit https://www.sbir.gov.
About BlueFoot
BlueFoot provides an AI-based market intelligence platform that combines patent, financial, and M&A data. We correlate these multiple data sets (patent, financial, and M&A data) using supervised deep learning, to answer fundamental questions related to patent and innovation strategy. BlueFoot serves corporate IP departments and the defense sector, and is expanding to technology transfer, venture capital, and financial institutions. For more information, please visit www.bluefoot.ai.