Capital Factory startup, IoT/AI, wins first STRIKEWERX challenge

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                                                                        Robyn Mack

marketing@iot.ai

                                                                        408-816-8898

 Press Release

Capital Factory startup, IoT/AI, wins first STRIKEWERX challenge

AUSTIN, Texas –  IoT/AI, an Austin-based startup and Capital Factory portfolio company, earned success for its innovative product line recently by securing a contract with the U.S. Air Force’s Global Strike Command. 

The winning idea – the Pico Personal Communicator – is reminiscent of the famed Star Trek communicator and beaming device, and allows air and ground crews to have communications, command and control, and resilient operations.  IoT/AI will now go on to second phase prototyping an even more advanced version  before potentially becoming a program of record for the military branch.

The award is part of the Command’s first “Emergency Aircrew Response Challenge,” hosted by AFWERX and the new STRIKEWERX, the innovation arm of the AFGSC Office of the Chief Scientist. 

“IoT/AI set out years ago to create the most advanced and secure sensing and communications system for commercial and defense customers that struggle with far-edge degraded and interference prone conditions,” said IoT/AI Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Kevin Montgomery.

To answer the Air Force need, IoT/AI transformed their technology from its existing 14-ounce black box into a wearable patch-like device providing alerting, audio commands, and acknowledgement capabilities in less than five months.

“We presented the idea of a wearable Star Trek-like communicator to leap ahead in digitization for the Air Force,” said the company’s Chief Operating Officer J.D. Stanley. “Not only did we win a STRIKEWERX Phase 1, we far exceeded expectations on adapting commercial-off-the-shelf-based technology for a mission need at warp speed.”

Stanley added that as an active startup with Capital Factory DoDx and Defense initiatives, “IoT/AI has learned, executed, and successfully won multiple awards to adapt our technology to serve the mission.”

The technology is set to revolutionize existing 1980s technology used by the Air Force and will redefine how aircrews are notified of emergencies, according to STRIKEWERX.

IoT/AI’s unified, secure platform enables connectivity, collaboration, and AI-based data analysis in the most extreme environments where other clouds or networks may not work, making this commercial technology adaptation optimal for expanded application in military and first responder settings. 

Since the start of the STRIKEWERX program, interest in the Pico Personal Communicator has grown to help address a wide range of training, maintenance, tactical, and health related use cases.  Air Force Global Strike Command digitized their aircrew alerting needs, and potentially contributed to a Department of Defense wide set of hands free and distributed communications, sensing, and machine intelligence tools.

For details on IoT/AI technology visit: https://iot.ai/

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About IoT/AI

Many businesses are down the path of IoT and IIoT, but operators continue to struggle with generating real value quickly or cost effectively. Founded in 2019, the IoT/AI™ team are sensor, network and AI experts with a passion for getting customers to the edge faster, including in extreme use cases for the Internet of Battlefield Things. Hailing from some of the world’s top technological companies and universities, IoT/AI expertise is built on a wide range of startup and executive management in deep science and technical applications. Based in Silicon Valley (Fremont, CA) and Silicon Hills (Austin, TX), doing business with IoT/AI serves to connect customers with a wealth of experience and solution-building in hardware, firmware, software, radio frequency, cybersecurity, AI/ML, cloud/SaaS, and ATAK/cursor-on-target. See what sets us apart at iot.ai.

About Capital Factory

Capital Factory is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas, the number one state for startups in the U.S. Thousands of entrepreneurs, programmers and designers gather day and night, in-person and online for meetups, classes and coworking. With boots on the ground in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, we meet the best entrepreneurs in Texas and introduce them to investors, employees, mentors and customers. According to Pitchbook, Capital Factory has been the most active, early-stage investor in Texas since 2010.