(Source: Ash Carter/flickr)
A slew of emerging tech firms now has a new angel investor: the U.S. military. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter praised the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), which is working to put new technologies into the hands of service members. Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, the unit began operations last August. He announced version 2.0 of the program, which will include another tech hub to be built in Boston, and promised that more will follow. (Rumor has it that Austin, Texas will be the next one.)
“In our budget for the coming year, we’ve requested $30 million in new funding to direct towards nontraditional companies with emerging commercially based technologies that meet our military’s needs,” Carter stated. He added, “With co-investment from the military services, this number is really just a starting point.”
The Pentagon bureaucracy never liked the idea of a semi-independent California office operating outside their…
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