Analyzing the AFWERX Portfolio
Data updated on 2024-08-28
Executive Summary
The figures below analyze the Air Force’s innovation team (AFWERX) initiatives since 2016. The key findings are:
- Over 3,000 companies have entered the AFWERX pipeline and have been awarded over $7B.
- The top 3 tech areas invested in include:
- Aircraft and aviation technologies
- Space technologies and satellites
- Unmanned Systems and Vehicles
- Underrepresented areas include munitions and weapons.
On the next page, we look into some of the prime defense contractors. We compare them against each other, but they can also be compared to the portfolio here.
Figures
The following treemap shows the cumulative investment (since 2016) by AFWERX into each tech area. The values are in $m.
Google Gemini assigned the tech area for 955 contracts. You can explore the accuracy of Gemini's assignments by searching the table below.
Data Definitions
- A company is defined using the Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) for the ultimate parent of the awardee.
- Some AFWERX contracts have an empty tech area. To fix this, we passed the abstract associated with the contract to Google Gemini and had Gemini assign a tech area.
Follow Up Analysis
Here are some additional figures that will be added to this page:
- How many companies in the AFWERX portfolio previously received DoD funding i.e. had existing defense business?
- How many companies in the AFWERX portfolio receive continued DoD funding i.e. "graduate" from SBIR/STTR? How many churn?
- For companies that continue to receive DoD funding, what fraction of companies get what fraction of follow up funds?
- Compared to traditional defense primes, what areas does AFWERX invest more heavily? For example, maybe Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning.
The goal of these follow ups is to understand whether SBIR/STTR has served as a gateway for new vendors (lowering their transaction costs and barriers to entry) or if it has disproportionately benefited companies with existing defense business.