Army selects 20 companies to advance in xTechSearch

By Jaspreet Gill / January 29, 2020 at 4:12 PM

The Army today selected 20 companies to advance to the next phase of its fourth Expeditionary Technology Search, or "xTechSearch 4.0," competition.

The competition provides small businesses the opportunity to present new technologies that support the Army's modernization priorities. The months-long competition kicked off last year with white paper proposals followed by three "pitch days" in January, where 48 companies presented potential innovations in combat vehicles, long-range precision fires, vertical lift and more.

Army acquisition executive Bruce Jette, who created xTechSearch in 2018, in a press release today said the service "must proactively and aggressively engage with innovators to see what new ideas, concepts, systems and sub-system components they can bring to the table."

The third phase, dubbed the "Innovators' Corner," will take place in March at the Association of the U.S. Army Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, AL. Each company will present their business plan, development plan, the results of "any customer discovery with the Army and commercial users" and showcase what they'd present in the final "proof-of-concept" phase, according to the press release.

The following companies have been selected for the third phase: Battle Sight Technologies of Dayton, OH; Bounce Imaging of Buffalo, NY; DroneShield LLC of Warrenton, VA; FastVDO LLC of Melbourne, FL; FLITE Material Sciences US, Inc. of Somerville, MA; GeneCapture, Inc. of Huntsville, AL; Geopipe of New York, NY; Inductive Ventures of Marietta, GA; IoTAI, Inc. of Fremont, CA; Kericure, Inc. of Wesley Chapel, FL; LumiShield Technologies, Inc. of Pittsburgh, PA; Lynq Technologies, Inc. of Brooklyn, NY; MEI Micro, Inc. of Addison, TX; Multiscale Systems, Inc. of Worcester, MA; NeuroFlow, Inc. of Philadelphia, PA; NanoSystems Laboratory of Chicago, IL; Novaa Ltd. of Dublin, OH; Passenger, Inc. of Austin, TX; Primal Space Systems of Raleigh, NC; and Vita Inclinata Technologies of Broomfield, CO.

Jette said the companies selected "presented incredible capabilities and systems that we would have not otherwise seen or be able to support had it not been for Army xTechSearch," according to the release.

Up to 12 companies will be awarded $120,000 and move onto the final live demonstration phase. Finalists will present their technologies during AUSA's annual meeting in Washington in October and a single winner will be awarded $250,000 at the conference.

The winners of the previous round of competition, xTechSearch 3.0, will also present their technologies at the AUSA Global Force Symposium in March.

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