Industrial Base Hackathon III: Washington D.C.
What if years of critical supply-chain delays could be collapsed into months or even weeks?
Ad Astra Group is launching a national series of Industrial Base Hackathons to tackle the systemic bottlenecks slowing America’s critical supply chains. Our second hackathon will be co-hosted with Kform, Station DC, Takton, and Center for Industrial Strategy in Washington D.C.
Special thanks to Applied Impact Robotics for hosting us at their new factory and Kform for organizing a Defense and Robotics Startup Factory Tour before our event at 7:00-8:30am (link to attend that towards the end).
This hackathon brings together manufacturers, founders, investors, primes, OEMs, operators, industry alliances, coalitions, academia and government to transform pre-surfaced industrial chokepoints—currently handled in silos—into a precise list of implementable, investable solutions that inform financing, policy, and structural action.
The Goal: Accelerate rebuilding America’s industrial base.
We focus on chokepoints impacting critical sectors such as energy, defense, telecom, food, medical devices, aerospace and more—for example:
Limited transportation links between suppliers
Minimal capacity to certify DoD castings
Major metal-parts manufacturers stuck in audit limbo
Banking regulations that prevent industrial loans
Infrastructure upgrades stalled by permitting
Scarce grades of steel powering the electrical grid
What we’ll do in one day
Break into solution pods
4-6 cross-domain teams (builders, capital, policy, operators) tackle 8–10 pre-surfaced bottlenecks. They map root causes across technical, structural, financial, workforce, and regulatory barriers and develop actionable solutions with support from experts.Regulatory & Policy Track
Policymakers, legal experts, and regulators work in parallel to outline clear pathways for reform.Circulating Experts
Subject-matter experts, including operators, procurement leaders, regulators, federal agencies, investors, lenders, and economic-development groups, rotate between teams to refine solutions.On-Call Expert Network
A remote group of 200 experts is available throughout the day for rapid guidance.Present Solutions
Teams present their findings to the room. Results feed directly into a national Bottleneck Tracker and the public Results Report.Compound Knowledge
Every bottleneck and solution enters a national dataset that informs future hackathons, policy conversations, and financing structures—creating a national feedback loop that surfaces barriers and accelerates fixes across the industrial base.
Food and drinks provided.
Who this is for
We’re curating people who can actually move the needle:
Manufacturers, industrial founders & primes
Energy, defense, robotics, infrastructure, food systems, medical devices, and more.Investors & lenders
Private credit, venture, project finance, banks, family offices, and strategic capital.Government & policy
DoD, DoE, OSC, SBA, procurement, permitting, certifications, standards, policy labs, state & local, economic development, industrial strategy.Operators & ecosystem builders
Engineers, supply-chain leaders, integrators, think tanks, industry groups, educators.
If you work on real production capacity, technological innovation, or the capital, regulations and policy that shape it, you’re in the right room.
How to participate
This is not a networking event or a conference. It’s a curated working session where each participant will be solving real problems.
Apply to join the hackathon by March 9th
Share your role, background, and bottlenecks you care about.
👉 Apply hereSubmit a bottlenecks
Have a constraint (materials, certification, capacity, financing, policy, workforce) we should look at?
👉 Submit hereInterested in sponsoring or co-hosting future events?
Help underwrite the work of mapping, solving, and scaling solutions across the industrial base.
👉 Reach out
Defense-Tech Factory Tours By KForm and TBA
👉 Sign Up Here
For more information visit: www.industrialbasehackathons.com