Booz Allen Hamilton announced that it has made a strategic investment in Latent AI, Inc., a rapidly growing company with an award-winning suite of software tools that enable adaptive artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) at the edge.
Particularly for defence organisations, the ability to deploy and run AI/ML models at the tactical edge is critical to achieving situational awareness, and AI is an increasingly essential component of mission success. Latent AI technologies simplify and accelerate traditional AI workflows, from model training and optimisation to enhancing the way AI models are deployed, for more robust, efficient, and agile Internet of Things (IoT) applications that improve user adoption and mission impact.
“The National Defence Strategy calls for a more innovative, resilient military to maintain the US competitive advantage, and the ability to collect, analyse 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 a force that is interconnected and information-advantaged, defence organisations need optimised, 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.”
The Latent AI Efficient Inference Platform (LEIP) is a modular, 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. LEIP enables rapid, highly scalable and adaptable AI application development at the tactical edge regardless of framework, operating system, architecture or hardware.
“This investment enhances the ability of both Latent AI and Booz Allen to meet the evolving needs of clients, particularly in deploying algorithms to the edge to prevail in the future digital battlefield,” said Brian MacCarthy, Booz Allen vice president and founder of the firm’s Tech Scouting group based out of San Francisco since 2015. “Sitting at the intersection of technology and mission, Booz Allen can help dual-use emerging tech companies connect the most innovative, advanced solutions to government’s critical mission requirements.”
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Latent AI was co-founded in 2018 as an early-stage venture spinout of SRI International and is funded by Future Ventures, Autotech Ventures, Perot Jain, and other prominent investors. The company has been recognised on CB Insights’ AI 100 and was named the 2020 Startup of the Year by IoT World.
“We founded Latent AI because we saw an opportunity to help developers and organizations transition more efficiently to the edge — and we have only scratched the surface of what is possible,” said Jags Kandasamy, co-founder and CEO at Latent AI. “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.”
As one of the largest providers of AI services for the federal government, Booz Allen already delivers some of the most advanced AI, ML, and data architecture technologies, services, and strategies through its work with the Joint AI Center, Army Futures Command, and U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command, among others.
