AI firm clinches $258M Air Force push alert contract

Artificial intelligence firm Dataminr has won a significant piece of government business in a five-year, $258.7 million contract to develop a system of push alerts and provide a commercially-available license subscription to the Air Force.

Venture capital-backed has been tasked to make the solution one that distributes alerts in near real-time via email notifications, web-based applications and mobile devices. The license subscription should incorporate publicly-available information sources and evaluate content to detect emerging events as they happen, then push alerts to users based on defined areas and topics of interest.

The Air Force received three bids for the contract, according to the Pentagon’s Wednesday awards digest.

Founded in 2009, New York City-based Dataminr has recently drawn attention for its claim of being the earliest identifier of the novel coronavirus outbreak’s early phase in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Dataminr says it sent the alerts seven days before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first public announcement, which was followed three days later by the World Health Organization’s initial notification to the public.

Dataminr designed its product to find early signals of high-impact events and emerging risks by using publicly-available data. The Air Force is requiring Dataminr’s solution to keep pace with developments and standards in commercial industry.