If Austin's tech ecosystem were a superhero, it might be Iron Man.
It's inventive, independent and occasionally a bit tipsy. It has a palpable ego and is more loner than joiner.
But there's a new character in town that's intrinsically tied to a broader mission that requires being part of the team. Enter Captain America -- AKA the Center for Defense Innovation.
And the analogy is fitting. When Capital Factory opens the doors to the new military tech outpost, it will have a decidedly Captain America-style theme. Big American flags, screaming eagles. The whole shebang.
The new space will be the public-facing home to the Army Futures Command, the Department of Defense's DIUx, the Air Force's AFWERX and tech consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. It fills the 8th floor of the Omni Building, which has long been home to Capital Factory's accelerator, coworking and event spaces.
“In Austin, Army Futures Command is like an iceberg. We see a tiny little bit of it. But most of it we’ll never see. It’s huge."
At the Center's grand opening on Thursday, Command Innovation Officer Adam Jay Harrison, Booz Allen Hamilton VP Karen Dahut and DIUx Director of Strategic Engagement Mike Madsen will speak. Other visitors that day include U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, along with dozens of other local civic and business leaders. But probably not Tony Stark.
Austin Inno visited the space in December, while the drills and jackhammers were still reshaping the space.
The floor includes offices for tech-oriented military divisions, conference rooms, small event and meeting spaces and a primary event space that holds 200 chairs and has a stage (complete with that screaming eagle and Capital Factory's gear symbol), Capital Factory founder Joshua Baer said during a hardhat tour.
“Just like Tim Cook came in to to make his big announcement about the coding program here at the community college, people are going to be flying in from D.C. all the time because they want to make an announcement on that stage," he said.
While the floor will have that Captain America feel, it will also be home to regular coworking space where non-military startups will work on their innovations. But Baer envisions a lot of chance meetings between those founders and the military officials who are charged with interacting with the public and identifying tech that could help the government.
"That's the serendipity we're going for," Baer said. "That's everything we're all about."
Capital Factory holds the lease on the floor, and it invested roughly $1.5 million to $2 million in the buildout. The Army, Department of Defense and other agencies are leasing spaces at Capital Factory pretty much the same way anyone else would.
You might expect some fancy security. But that's not what the Center for Defense Innovation is about.
“They didn’t come here because they need a secure facility," Baer said. "They’ve got a lot of secure facilities. They came here because they needed to be not in a secure facility because they can’t just talk to regular people in secure facilities."
In addition to the coworking, offices for the military and Booz Allen Hamilton, the floor will also have a large conference room with a view of the Texas Capitol, a VR working room, a VR demo room and a podcasting studio. (Stay tuned, we'll share photos when we have them.)
The new floor will also become an official SXSW defense venue this March, and it will have robots, demos and other defense innovations on display.
But you'll still need clearance to see the really top-secret stuff at the Army Futures Command post in the nearby University of Texas Systems building.
“In Austin, Army Futures Command is like an iceberg," Baer said. "We see a tiny little bit of it. But most of it we’ll never see. It’s huge."
You can register for the Center for Defense Innovation's grand opening on Thursday evening here.
