DIU To Open More Locations for Defense Marketplace Engagement

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which aims to accelerate the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) adoption of commercial technologies, is expanding its outreach to businesses with its OnRamp Hub initiative.

According to Sarah Pearson, DIU commercial engagement director, the DIU tries to complete contracts quickly to deliver capabilities to the warfighter at speed and scale.

“We’re really looking to move past prototype and into operational use in less than a two-year timeline,” Pearson said during a DIU open house presentation.

To help facilitate more engagement between business owners and the government market, the DIU has five sites across the United States, with locations in Wichita, Kansas; Phoenix; Dayton, Ohio; Honolulu; and Renton, Washington.

Now, the goal is to build more OnRamp Hubs across the country to reach a wider range of innovation ecosystems and companies, from startups to well-established businesses. According to the DIU, the fiscal year 2025 expansion sites will be in Kentucky, Minnesota and Montana.

These physical DIU locations offer a space for mentoring, events and programming that help businesses connect with the DOD marketplace and develop a regional defense innovation ecosystem. In these OnRamp Hubs, companies can learn more about accessing funding, and they can participate in transition services like technology readiness level evaluations, cyber hardening, adversarial capital screening and authority-to-operate support.

“By creating a more accessible and streamlined path to funders, founders and talent to engage with the DOD, these hubs embody the DIU’s ‘front door’ to the private sector and academia,” the slide presentation said.

According to the presentation, the DIU hubs will bring in local stakeholders, help accelerate early-stage technologies and address systemic barriers.

For example, Pearson said the DIU is looking into how the hubs can help support small business security clearances for classified information at the local level.

Jesse Gipe, DIU director of venture portfolio, said the OnRamp Hubs can help technology companies decide which branches of the military would benefit most from their capabilities.

“DIU is not out to provide individually tailored advice to companies, especially those who are not under contract with us about your potential pathways into the government market, but we are trying to kind of build a process and tooling to help you get smarter and faster about how to do that, both through the OnRamp Hubs and through other initiatives where we can disseminate knowledge kind of more broadly,” Gipe explained. 

In addition to the physical locations, the DIU provides an online resource guide for commercial companies that are looking to break into the DOD marketplace and secure a contract with the DIU.