AE Industrial Partners enters new government IT investment

Private equity firm AE Industrial Partners made its second deal in less than a month on Monday with news that it has acquired majority ownership of government technology services company NuWave Solutions.

In addition, AEI has brought aboard former Homeland Security Department official Dr. Reggie Brothers as CEO and nearly two-decade defense sector veteran Michael Buscher as chief growth officer. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Mark Keyser, a NuWave co-founder and formerly its CEO, will also reinvest into the company and act as an adviser to the board of directors.

For AEI, this investment in NuWave comes nearly three weeks after the unveiling of space technology company Redwire that was formed through a merger of two other portfolio companies.

NuWave was founded in 1999 and touts itself as a provider of data management, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing services in support of anticipatory intelligence and advanced decision support technologies used by the federal government.

"Artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to gain significant momentum helping governments and businesses gain intelligence from their vast amounts of data to make better decisions,” AEI Vice President Jeffrey Hart said in a release. “The end uses for these capabilities continue to evolve and we look forward to being at the forefront of this evolution with the NuWave team."

Brothers and Buscher join NuWave from Peraton, where they were respectively chief technology officer and vice president of intelligence and special operations.

Prior to Peraton, Brothers served as undersecretary for science and technology at DHS and before that was deputy assistant defense secretary for research. His career also includes positions at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Chertoff Group, BAE Systems, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Envoy Networks and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Buscher founded drone company Vanguard Defense Industries and also held a 20-year career in the Army and CIA.

Akerman LLP served as legal adviser and Grant Thornton LLP served as financial adviser to AEI. McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC served as legal adviser and Conlin & Co. served as financial adviser to NuWave.