From Concept to Contract: Conversations at the Army Demand Signal Forum | All About the Base

This episode of All About the Base, a video series analyzing critical industrial base topics, explores the U.S. Army’s efforts to modernize its capabilities and fill operational needs by aligning private capital, commercial innovation, and defense acquisition. As Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomy, cyber, and technological breakthroughs come to define the next generation of military platforms and equipment, venture capital-backed defense start-ups are playing a significantly expanded role in the industrial base. Over the past decade, venture capital investments of more than $10 million in defense-focused companies have grown five times in value. Yet scaling from prototype to production and delivering inventions into the hands of warfighters takes more than capital. How can those who fund, build, and field advanced military capabilities be more closely integrated and deliver operational success? How can the U.S. Army’s demand signal for key technologies be sent and received across the industrial base?  

Host Dr. Jerry McGinn, Director of the Center for the Industrial Base, discusses these issues with venture capital, defense technology, and Army acquisition leaders at the Army Demand Signal Forum. The Army Pathway for Innovation and Technology (PIT) and U.S. Army FUZE, the service’s unified framework for accelerating private investment and emerging technologies from concept to combat-ready capability, facilitated the forum, which convened at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation in Palo Alto, California on April 28, 2026. Together, the guests’ perspectives demonstrate the importance of integrating private capital and government acquisition and the increasingly important intersection of commercial innovation and national security.

This event is made possible by general funding to CSIS.