Tech firm uses AI to make Pentagon budget, spending easier to track

As lawmakers and Pentagon officials push for reforms to the defense acquisition system, a small tech firm is expanding a data-analysis platform it says could arm Pentagon weapons-buyers with the information they need to more effectively manage the Defense Department’s nearly trillion-dollar budget.

The company, Obviant, was founded in 2023 and developed its defense acquisition platform as a means to help both DOD and the defense industry better understand how the Pentagon is spending its money and what stakeholders in Congress and in the department are prioritizing.

Navigating that system typically means combing through the thousands of pages of PDFs that make up the Defense Department’s budget request, tracking congressional markups through multiple committees and — in the fiscal 2026 cycle — keeping tabs on the status of a $150 billion budget reconciliation bill.

“There’s no source of truth. There’s no mapping for that,” Obviant founder and CEO Brendan Karp told Defense News in an interview. “All this information is just loads of structured and unstructured sources.”

On Tuesday, Obviant announced $7 million in seed funding that it will use to increase the AI-based platform’s capabilities and make it available to more users.

“With this recent funding, Obviant will expand its team, advance the AI capabilities of its platform, and broaden its customer base — transforming how companies, investors, and government leaders make more informed decisions across the defense sector,” Obviant said in a statement.

The funding round was led by Shield Capital, a venture firm led by former DOD and defense industry experts focused on early-stage companies developing AI, autonomy, cyber and space capabilities.

Karp and his team rolled out their platform last year and have targeted a few main customer groups: investors trying to understand where the department is focusing its funding, companies trying to sell to the military, congressional staff tracking DOD funding priorities and program offices and acquisition leaders in the Pentagon trying to transition technology to the field.

For all of these users, Karp said, Obviant pulls data from open-source budget documents and appropriations and contract announcements, as well as any unique customer data, and finds common threads within it.

The company provides information about how much the department is investing in certain capabilities or using certain contracting tools. It can also track trends, such as whether DOD’s public rhetoric matches its actual spending.

The firm has experienced success in its first few years, recently closing its first government contracts with several DOD innovation organizations, which Karp said he can’t yet disclose.

As lawmakers call for reforms to the defense acquisition system and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushes for greater speed and efficiency in the weapons-buying process, Karp said he sees a role for the company in facilitating progress in those areas.

“We feel like we can play an accelerant role in that process,” he said.

Tech firm uses AI to make Pentagon budget, spending easier to track

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