Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

DARPA, officially known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and part of the Department of Defense (DoD), has selected five top technology accelerators from across the nation as DARPA Commercial Accelerators to facilitate rapid commercialization and scale of DARPA-funded technologies.

The regional Commercial Accelerators are:

• Capital Factory (Austin, TX);
• CIMIT (Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston);
• FedTech (Hyperion Technologies LLC in Arlington, VA);
• SRI International (Menlo Park, CA); and
• Wireless Research Center of North Carolina (Wake Forest, NC).

DARPA 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 U.S. 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 DoD acquisition and commercialization; and
• 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

DARPA’s Commercial Strategy group leads the agency’s efforts to bring top business expertise and commercial entrepreneurial talent to DARPA performers. Commercial Strategy’s mission is to prevent adversarial influence in DARPA-funded technologies, so they remain accessible and available to the United States and its allies. The Commercial Strategy team focuses on reducing the highest business risks to enable defense and commercial sectors to scale DARPA technologies faster, more efficiently, and with maximum impact for national and economic security.

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 commercialization experts. Since 2022, the EEI program has helped DARPA performers raise more than $1 billion in private investment capital and launch over 21 new products, services, and capabilities. Additionally, U.S. corporations have invested $639 million in the acquisition of DARPA early stage technologies.

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