Whereas Silicon Valley officials such as Palantir, Meta, and Openai are holding headlines to trade for their Brunello Cussinley Wests. Army reserved uniformA quiet change is going on in the US Navy.

How? Well, Navy Chief Technology Officer Justin Fanley says he has spent the last two and a half years, focused on cutting through red tape and cutting via procurement bicycle, who once worked with a nightmare with the army for startups. Attempts represent a less visible but potentially more meaningful remaking, one where the government is moving fast and is more clever about where this dollar is doing.

“We are more open to business and partnership than before,” Fanley recently told Techcrunch in a zoom interview. “We are humble and listening more than before, and we recognize that if an organization shows us how we can do business differently, we want it to be a partnership.”

Right now, many of these partnerships are facilitating, which is called the innovation adoption kit of the fanley navy, a range of framework and tools that aims to bridge the so -called valley of death, where promising technology dies on its way to production from prototypes. He said, “The government of your Granddadi had a spagty chart how to get,” he said. “Now it’s a funnel, and we’re saying, if you can show that you have excluded the results, we want to nominate you as an enterprise service.”

In a recent case, an eight-year-old, an eight-year-old, Somarville, Mass-based cybercity startup for a request (RFP) for a request (RFP) went for pilot sins, which helps large organizations to protect sensitive data and digital identity, in part, decentralization, which is not a central place. (One of the customers of Via is the US Air Force.)

The new approach of the Navy operates on what fanley calls a “horizon” model, borrowed and adapted from McKiny’s Innovation Framework. Companies proceed through three stages: evaluation, structured piloting and scaling for enterprise services. Significant differences from traditional government contracts, fanley, says that the Navy now occurs with problems rather than predetermined solutions.

“Instead of specifying it,” Hey, we want to solve this problem in such a way that we always have this, “We just say that we have a problem, who wants to solve it, and how will you solve it?” Fanley said.

Fanley’s drive is personal to overhall the Navy Tech. Originally a scholarship cadets studying electrical engineering in the Air Force, they were disqualified from military service due to the issue of lungs. Anyway, determined to serve, he chose the Navy on private sector offers more than 20 years ago because he “wanted to live around people in uniform.” Since then, his career has spread roles in defense, intelligence, DARPA and open source initiative before returning to the Navy Department.

The change he is overseeing is opening doors for companies who never considered government work and would have thought about time wastage to think. For example, fanley points, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) run into a competition, in which the Navy expected a handful of bidder for a niche cylissive challenge, but received about 100 reactions – many of the many companies which had already worked with DODs, but have already been solving similar problems in the private sector.

Fanley says that his team has fully documented dozens of success stories, in which a venture-supported startup used robotic process automation to zip through a two-year challan backlog in a few weeks. Another example included rolling out network reforms for an aircraft carrier, which saved 5,000 sailors hours in the first month.

“This not only changed their availability, but it changed their morale, Esprit de Corps, how much time they can spend in doing other tasks,” Fanley said, stating that the time has survived is one of the five matrix that the Navy used to measure the success of a pilot program. The other four operating flexibility, per user cost, adaptability and user experience are.

As the Navy is looking for now, Fanley outlined several high-primary areas including AI, where the service is actively talking with teams. For the beginning, the Navy wants to accelerate AI adoption that in cases using basic generative AI beyond, more agent applications are used in more agent applications for everything from data processing to data processing on ships. She also cited “alternative” GPS, stating that the Navy is quickly adopting alternative precise navigation and time software, especially for integration with unmanned systems. And he referred to “Legacy System Modernization”, saying that some of the Navy’s some aging techniques that are looking for modernization of the Navy include air traffic control infrastructure and ship-based systems.

So how much money is it taking to work every year? Fanley said that he was not in independence to provide specific budget breakdowns, but he said that the Navy currently emerges and commercial technology versus traditional defense contractors allocates a percentage of single-nails for traditional defense contractors-a balance that hopes that it will develop greatly because AI moves forward.

As the most common cause, promising technologies fail when tested, he said that it is not necessary due to technical shortcomings. Instead, he said, the Navy works on long budget cycles, and if a new solution does not replace or “close” an existing system, the funding becomes problematic.

“If we are getting benefits and we are measuring that profit, but there is no money [getting to the startup] In one and a half years – this is really a bad story for their investors and our users, “Fanley explained.” Sometimes it is a zero yoga game. Sometimes it does not happen. And if we are going to flip to the public-private sector more private and ride the wave, we have a lot of technical debt, on which we need to cut the anchor. ,

During our call, we also asked the fanley whether the “America first” policies of the Trump administration are affecting these processes in any way. Fanley replied that the current focus on domestic manufacturing aligns well with the Navy’s “flexibility” goals (they pointed to digital twins, adorable manufacturing and on-site production capabilities that can reduce supply chain dependence).

Either way, the Navy’s message for entrepreneurs and investors is clearly clear that it is a real option for traditional commercial markets, and it is a pitch that is receiving traction in Silicon Valley, where receptivity to partnership with the US government is increasing.

Andrew Bosworth of Meta Recently seen in a Bloomberg event In San Francisco: “I think people give credit to Silicon Valley.”

As long as the industry supervisors can attach for a long time, this is a marked change from a more doubtful trend that is very characteristic of the valley in the previous years.

Now, Fanley has specially expected to attract more that interest for the Navy. He told Techcrunch, “I will invite anyone who wants to serve more and more missions from the perspective of a solution, to include us in this journey.”

If you are interested in listening to our complete conversation with Fanelli, you can see it Right here,