Booz Allen Hamilton announced it has made a strategic investment in adaptive artificial intelligence company Latent AI, Inc., expanding opportunities for clients to increase AI adoption, especially on the battlefield.
Latent AI provides software and technologies that accelerate traditional AI workflows, from model training and optimization to enhancing how AI models are deployed. This technology is especially helpful for defense organizations as they need the ability to deploy and run AI and machine learning at the tactical edge.
“The National Defense Strategy calls for a more innovative, resilient military to maintain the U.S. competitive advantage, and the ability to collect, analyze and quickly act on data is at the core of that national security mission,” said Steve Escaravage, senior vice president at Booz Allen.
To fully leverage these capabilities, Escaravage said defense organizations need optimized, scalable AI and data compression at the tactical edge.
“Booz Allen’s investment in Latent AI will help enable our clients to implement ML models on small form factor chip-sets and into highly sought-after end user devices, which will increase AI adoption and return on investment,” he added.
Booz Allen already delivers advanced AI, ML and data architecture technologies to the federal government through its work with the Joint AI Center, Army Futures Command and U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command. This investment will help meet evolving defense needs, with solutions like the Latent AI Efficient Inference Platform, for instance.
LEIP is a “fully integrated edge AI development platform that optimizes the compute, energy consumption and memory allocation of tactical edge devices without requiring changes to prior model infrastructures or edge system designs,” according to Booz Allen. The platform allows for highly scalable and adaptable AI application development at the tactical edge.
“Both Latent AI and Booz Allen are dedicated to helping organizations achieve significantly more with their AI systems, and we are excited to have Booz Allen as an investor and partner as we pave the path forward to a smarter edge,” said Jags Kandasamy, co-founder and CEO at Latent AI.
Latent AI was co-founded in 2018 as an early-stage venture spinout of SRI International and is funded by investors including Future Ventures, Autotech Ventures and Perot Jain.