Cubic to acquire rest of software firm Pixia

Cubic Corp. has evidently found that it likes what it sees in Pixia nearly three months after the $50 million acquisition of an initial 20-percent stake in the commercial software outfit.

San Diego-based Cubic will pay $200 million in cash to purchase the remaining 80 percent and expects to close the transaction by February of next year, the company said Wednesday in its fourth quarter and fiscal year-end earnings release and call with investors.

“Pixia further enables our real-time battlefield cloud strategy to provide information to the edge of the battlefield,” Cubic CEO Brad Feldmann told analysts.

Feldman added that Cubic sees Pixia as not just helping on the bottom line given the latter’s subscription-based model, but also being “an enabling technology for the Department of Defense's Internet of Battlefield Things, artificial intelligence strategy.”

The pending deal for all of Pixia represents Cubic’s latest move to further build a defense technology franchise with data and secure communications platforms at the center.

Acquisitions have been a main component of that push, including the most recent deal prior to Pixia in March that saw Cubic buy radio frequency device company Nuvotronics.

Pixia specifically focuses on helping analysts handle live, dynamically-updating data beyond just still imagery and video that can be stored in a cloud environment so users can collaborate and share.

Mike Twyman, president of Cubic’s mission solutions business, told WT in August after the initial Pixia investment that automation is part of the equation as well.

“Big data tools like this are necessary to enable the (artificial intelligence) and machine learning algorithms that are being built to further provide additional situational understanding in the communities that we serve,” Twyman said at the time.