DENVER - The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is branching out from its usual clique of defense contractors and opening more programs to commercial vendors, a senior official announced. The agency wants faster access to satellite data and AI-driven analysis, because apparently building everything in-house is so last decade.

Speaking at the GEOINT Symposium on May 3, NGA Deputy Director Brett Markham noted that innovation in computer vision and data analytics has migrated to the private sector, including startups and small businesses. The agency is now trying to widen access to programs like Luno, which contracts vendors to deliver AI-enabled geospatial intelligence products from satellite imagery and other sources.

“To do this, we are constantly surveying the marketplace for innovative capabilities that meet our needs,” Markham said, gesturing at the 1,300+ satellites currently in orbit - a number expected to skyrocket by the end of the decade, flooding intelligence agencies with more data than they know what to do with.

Luno, valued at around $500 million, is the poster child for this strategy. Unlike traditional procurement of raw imagery, Luno buys finished intelligence products: change detection, facility monitoring, activity analysis - all whipped up by AI and analytics tools. It’s structured as multi-vendor contracts, so NGA can scale services and bring in new providers as capabilities evolve. Luno A focuses on infrastructure monitoring and change detection; Luno B is all about human domain monitoring and broader situational awareness.

To speed things up, NGA has created a Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) - because what’s more rapid than a new bureaucracy? This was prompted by a Trump administration executive order telling agencies to use more private-sector tools to keep up with China. The RCO aims to cut acquisition timelines from years or months to weeks or days. Initial focus areas include rapid prototyping of commercial AI tools, especially computer vision systems and large language models that can automate time-sensitive analytic tasks.

NGA is also rolling out the red carpet for smaller firms, encouraging them to join its Mentor-Protégé Program, which pairs small businesses with established contractors to build technical chops. Upcoming outreach includes an industry day in July at NGA headquarters in Springfield, Virginia, and a “small business collider” event in June at the St. Louis campus - because nothing says 'collaboration' like a particle accelerator metaphor.

Meanwhile, NGA is rebuilding its workforce after last year’s government-wide DOGE efficiency push trimmed the fat. They’re hiring for specialized roles in data engineering and AI, and the response has been, well, massive: about 1,000 applicants showed up to a recent hiring event in Springfield, with several hundred offers extended. A similar event in St. Louis has already drawn more than 1,000 expressions of interest.

“We identified very specific skill sets that we felt are necessary for our workforce moving forward … best suited to enable an AI-savvy workforce,” Markham said. Because in the intelligence world, being AI-savvy is the new black.