Synthetaic, a Delafield-based synthetic data company, is working with the U.S. Air Force to demonstrate how Synthetaic's technology can rapidly speed up artificial intelligence-powered object detection in geospatial data.
The company announced on May 20 that it has won a contract with AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation arm. It's a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) competitive contract, according to Synthetaic founder and CEO Corey Jaskolski. Phase 1 contracts are valued at $50,000 or less, according to the AFWERX website.
"We’re not really focused on the size, but on the opportunity to demonstrate to the Department of Defense a totally new way of doing AI," Jaskolski said.
Synthetaic's Rapid Automatic Image Categorization (RAIC) technology allows non-experts to ingest geospatial imagery, accurately label objects of interest and build an artificial intelligence (AI) model around it in less than an hour instead of the several months it currently takes, according to the company.
“Right now, the basic workflow of AI in anything — commercial or Department of Defense — completely precludes you from being able to use AI on something that you want to know right now,” Jaskolski said. "What our toolset does, is it allows us to literally point and click and make an AI model in 60 seconds."
For example, Synthetaic's technology could help a pilot quickly search an entire city to identify a location to land a helicopter, Jaskolski said. It's also being designed for applications including security and medicine.
"As far as we know, no one trains AI on the fly during any sort of operation," Jaskolski said.
The first phase of the AFWERX SBIR contract is a pilot program that will last for 90 days, after which Synthetaic may be eligible for a longer SBIR Phase 2 contract, according to Jaskolski. Phase 2 contracts go up to $750,000, according to the AFWERX website.
Synthetaic, which was founded in 2019, has raised $4.5 million in funding and plans to do another fundraising round this year to raise double or triple that amount, Jaskolski said. The company also plans to double its staff from around 19 people to roughly 40, he said. Most of the team is based in Delafield, but the company gave up its office space during the pandemic. It's currently seeking a new office location in the area, Jaskolski said.
