Happy Hour with DIU Commercialization Fellowship (DCF) Startups
Come Meet our DCF 2026 Cohort of 21 Teams!
Join us at Station DC for mocktails and light hors d'oeuvres as we showcase the 21 student teams from this year's cohort. Meet the mission-driven founders behind some of the most promising emerging defense technologies, hear what they're building, and connect with the innovators shaping the next wave of national security and defense innovation.
SwarmShield (Stanford) — Autonomous terminal-guidance stack for low-cost interceptor drones to defeat Shahed-class attack drones at swarm tempo.
OMNIA AI (UC Berkeley) — GUARD, an autonomous, sub-$1,000 kinetic system that detects and intercepts small explosive drones with no operator in the loop.
Marten (Stanford) — Agentic AI platform that collects and analyzes open-source data from behind China's Great Firewall to assess the PRC defense industry.
AGA (Agincourt Arsenal) (Stanford) — "Fletcher," a containerized, additive-manufacturing cell that produces drone warheads at the edge of the fight.
Downtrace (Stanford) — Sovereign edge-AI command console giving Special Forces ODAs offline AI decision support and doctrine reference in disconnected environments.
BreachON (UF) — Low-cost, expendable multi-modal lane-marking system for combat breaching, with real-time digital lane awareness to commanders.
KHARROS (UC Santa Cruz others) — Independent compliance-scoring and test-and-evaluation platform for vetting commercial AIautonomy before the government buys it.
Team Buzzard (Virginia Tech) — Passive, low-signature distributed RF sensor network that detects enemy drones without exposing soldier positions.
Parallax Defense Corp (UC Berkeley) — "Torrent," a water-based, AI-guided counter-UAS system using a high-pressure water stream as near-zero-cost ammunition.
Track, Fence, Maneuver (UC Berkeley) — ATAK middleware that translates EW sensor data into a simple, real-time threat map for the frontline soldier.
FireFly Intel (FAU) — On-device, multi-sensor fusion layer for drones that flags multispectral decoys and shares intel over low-bandwidth tactical networks.
ENCOMPASS (UCSD) — Web-based R&D intelligence platform that surfaces and ranks emerging technologies against DoD mission needs.
RapidRotor-AI (Purdue) — ML surrogate-modeling platform that replaces weeks-long, costly CFD runs with near-instant rotor/propeller aerodynamic predictions.
Skyscan (USC) — Software-only ATAK plugin providing cryptographic drone identification friend-or-foe over the tactical mesh network.
OVERSEER (UF) — Data-augmentation and causal-inference layer that helps information-operations analysts measure operational impact faster.
ALPHA (Univ. of S. Mississippi) — Physics-informed ML system that screens ballistic armor materials computationally before costly physical testing.
ionX Technologies (Stanford) — AI-accelerated reagent selection to boost yield from U.S. rare-earth and critical-mineral processing with no new capex.
AI Route Planning (CMU) — ATAK plugin that auto-generates fast, safe, and concealed vehicle routes across complex terrain in seconds.
Tessellate (Stanford) — Simulator-to-field platform for developing, testing, and deploying adaptable multi-drone mission workflows.
Rare Earth Rescue (Univ. of Chicago) — First U.S. marketplace connecting end-of-life scrap supply with recyclers to build a domestic recycled rare-earth supply chain.
Operational & Strategic Networks (UMich) — An AI-powered digital wargaming platform that uses generative AI to modernize military leadership training and replace outdated analog systems