We recently announced our $99M IDIQ contract from the Department of Defense (DoD) to drive proliferation of our Radix technology and expand its capabilities for increased assurance of microelectronic devices. The contract award comes at a critical inflection point with the rapidly growing demand to improve design security for commercial semiconductors intersecting with the US government’s priority to dramatically improve assurance across the design supply chain.
The government has a keen interest in accelerating its adoption of commercial technology to meet its mission objectives, especially in the realm of semiconductors. More often than not, the government’s access to the latest commercial technology is hindered by complex funding and procurement processes. This contract allows us to break down some of these barriers and enable the government to quickly access and advance our technology and accelerate strategic work with our government customers and commercial partners.
While there is more recent awareness around securing semiconductor supply chains with significant investments from the CHIPS for America Act, the government has long been aware of the importance of hardware security assurance for semiconductor devices and has been a strategic partner for us since our founding.
History and Background
Cycuity (formerly Tortuga Logic) was created with the mission of ensuring the security of all electronic products by focusing on the semiconductors (application processors, microcontrollers, system-on-chips, etc.) that power them. Since founding the company, we have observed significant growth in the number of publicly disclosed Common Vulnerability Exposures (CVEs) related to hardware and semiconductors. These vulnerabilities have immense impact on any electronic device regardless of the market segment, including the military and defense sectors overseen by the DoD.
The vast majority of semiconductors are developed and consumed within the commercial market, including the automotive, IoT, hyperscaler, and AI/ML segments. The US government, on the other hand, develops a relatively small volume of microelectronic devices while consuming more from the commercial semiconductor market. While the US government’s semiconductor consumption is far less than that of commercial markets, the applications that these microelectronic devices are deployed in have immense criticality in their reliability and security to meet their objectives. This criticality has continued to make the US government’s focus on hardware and semiconductor security a top priority.
In the early days of the company, the DoD quickly recognized the importance of leveraging best-in-class commercial security technologies to increase the assurance of the semiconductor devices they use in a rapidly evolving hardware vulnerability landscape. Since Cycuity’s inception, our technology has been deployed and used in several government programs and was awarded a multi-million dollar SBIR Phase II contract through the Air Force’s AFWERX program to provide technology enhancements that had strategic benefit for the DoD. This early SBIR contract was the impetus for a sequence of events that would allow us to land this strategic SBIR Phase III IDIQ to continue to provide microelectronic assurance for the semiconductor market as a whole.
Benefit for our Commercial Customers
While this contract is specifically with the DoD, our commercial customers will benefit significantly from the government’s investment in our Radix technology. As mentioned prior, the DoD consumes most of their microelectronic devices from the commercial market, so ensuring the US government has access to semiconductors with the highest levels of security assurance at scale advances overall national security.
Furthermore, the vulnerabilities that impact semiconductor devices are similar across all market segments, including aerospace and defense. As our technology is enhanced with strategic benefit for the DoD, these enhancements will directly benefit our commercial customers. We will extend Radix to address new security use models, provide better design supply chain traceability and governance, and add new capabilities for enhanced security metrics and coverage. All of which have substantial value creation with our commercial customers and partners in automotive, IoT, hyperscalers, and AI/ML.
Moving Forward
The DoD and US government will continue to be strategic partners for our company, and this contract provides us with the vehicle to do so for the next 7 years. Cycuity will continue its mission of advancing product security through semiconductor assurance. To execute on this, we will need to continue to build value within the broader semiconductor market. This contract will greatly accelerate our ability to enhance and deliver our technology to meet the needs of a rapidly growing hardware security market and further promote our leadership in addressing new, costly, and difficult to detect vulnerabilities that can compromise electronic products, both within the commercial and government markets.