Booz Allen Hamilton is launching a $100M venture arm for tech startups

Heads up, VC-seeking founders: As of today, global management consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton has a new, $100 million venture fund for startups.

The tech consultant, which is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, today launched Booz Allen Ventures, a $100 million venture capital arm. The huge funding move will bring VC support to seed, Series A and Series B startups developing technology in defense, artificial intelligence/machine learning, cybersecurity and deep technology. The company said it is primarily looking for startups based in the US.

Frank DiGiammarino, executive VP and solutions and innovation strategy lead at Booz Allen, said that the firm hopes to identify what’s out there in startup technology, as well as uncover what could be an important technology.

“We really see these companies as bringing in the strong technology, differentiated technology, and we want to be friendly with them,” DiGiammarino told Technical.ly. “We really see them as a critical asset for our clients and are looking to pull them through to help get to the mission faster.”

Recently, the company has invested in these target areas through startups like Latent AI, a tiny machine learning company; Synthetaic, which delivers synthetic data; and Reveal Technology, an edge analytics firm. In addition to the funding, startup founders will also receive mentorship from Booz Allen executives to reduce risk.

With the fund, Booz Allen also hopes to expand its Tech Scouting capability, which searches through the startup community for new and exciting founders. Booz Allen plans to use this knowledge to better recommend tech investments, especially in differentiated and mission-specific applications.

“Our Tech Scouting program gives us unique insight about where opportunities for hyper-growth exist. But anticipating opportunity isn’t sufficient – we need to deploy capital to move at digital speed,” said Brian MacCarthy, VP of tech scouting and ventures at Booz Allen, in a statement. “Booz Allen Ventures allows us to actively bridge the gap between opportunity and capability and accelerate the services-to-solutions transformation.”

On top of the early-stage funding, DiGiammarino said that Booz Allen is also reserving a portion of the fund for follow-on funding for those that have a long-term need to get their tech systems developed. Right now, it’s looking for strong commercial tech that’s duel use, he added.

Booz Allen intends to use this fund to lead a tech-enabled transformation for government clients while also accessing new and innovative technology for the firm’s major programs. All in all, DiGiammarino hopes the startup founders can help steer Booz Allen’s growth.

“If they have strong tech, we’re a great place to come because we are founder-friendly, startup-friendly and really want to get the tech to our customer base,” DiGiammarino said.