Chevy Chase venture capital firm Arlington Capital Partners LLC is creating another intelligence contractor to add to its portfolio.
Eqlipse Technologies LLC will tackle cyber and signals intelligence engineering for national security customers within the Department of Defense and intelligence community agencies. The company was formed by the combination five legacy companies that work with intelligence agencies. Eqlipse said the new company will total $200 million in annual revenue.
Arlington Capital Partners’ $3.5 billion sixth fund is the fuel behind Eqlipse’s plans for growth as it builds out a 31,000-square-foot sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, and plans to hire 100 more people to join its current roster of 620 employees.
“Somewhat unique for a government contractor is we have a lot of capital behind us,” Eqlipse CEO Dennis Kelly said. “We're able to make investments in things that we think are in high demand in terms of capabilities. We can invest in new products; we can invest in research and development much more than most government contractors can because of the capital that we have behind us.”
The company already boasts a portfolio of proprietary technologies and subject matter experts, including Kelly, who has more than 35 years in the government contracting space. He's the former CEO of Northern Virginia IT contractors A-T Solutions, Buchanan & Edwards and Iomaxis, and has worked with Arlington Capital Partners before as the president and chief operating officer of intelligence and cybersecurity firm Centauri, an ACP portfolio company that was sold to KBR Inc. in 2020 for $827 million.
Eqlipse is headquartered in Annapolis Junction, but it also has primary locations in Herndon and Dayton, Ohio — near its customers, like the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio. Half of its employees reside in the Greater Washington area, according to Kelly. The planned SCIF space is in addition to an Annapolis Junction already occupied by one of Eqlipse's subsidiaries.
Chief Operating Officer Katie Selbe, who was formerly an exec with Arlington intelligence and defense contractor BlueHalo — also an Arlington Capital Partners portfolio company — said Eqlipse is looking to hire software engineers and some systems admin staff, cyber analytics, cyber analyst and reverse engineers in Greater Washington. In the Dayton area, the company is looking for material and photonics engineers as they work with customers like the AFRL, she said.
Kelly said he also plans to grow the company the acquisition of companies specializing in data collection techniques involving data storage and retrieval, artificial intelligence and machine learning, or companies that are creating new materials, systems or sensor technology the DOD needs.
“We believe there's kind of a gap in the middle market,” Kelly said about the defense contracting industry. “And we're buying very innovative, technically discriminated companies and investing in those companies to build a discriminating middle-market player.”
Arlington Capital Partners' portfolio currently includes several government services and technology contractors, such as Alexandria’s Systems Planning and Analysis Inc. and Herndon’s Tyto Athene LLC.
