Black Cape, Inc.

Black Cape, Inc., a SBA-certified veteran-owned small business based in Arlington, Virginia, delivers advanced research and development, software development, data analytics, and artificial intelligence solutions to defense and national security agencies as a prime contractor (91% of recent awards) and, less frequently, as a subcontractor. The company competes without set-aside restrictions on most of its largest vehicles and prime work, though it holds positions on Total Small Business set-asides including OASIS+ SB and the USSOCOM SBIR Phase III IDC.

Black Cape's customer concentration is dominated by defense and intelligence agencies, with the top five customers accounting for 61% of recent awards by count. The Department of the Air Force leads by potential value—$1.84 billion across six awards—anchored by the $600 million single-award Enterprise Decision Integration Support (EDIS) IDIQ (awarded September 2025, running through September 2030) and a $274.6 million time-and-materials delivery order for the Authoritative Theater Object Management System under EDIS (awarded April 2026). The Naval Sea Systems Command's Seaport-NXG multiple-award IDIQ ($4 billion ceiling) represents the second-largest dollar concentration, followed by the Department of the Air Force Headquarters District Washington's $249 million AI Talent 2.0 Basic Ordering Agreement (awarded May 2023, running through May 2028) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense's $249 million JAIC AI Data Readiness BOA (awarded March 2022, running through March 2027). US Special Operations Command accounts for seven awards worth $60.9 million in combined potential value, including SBIR Phase III work on the platform-agnostic RUBICON data storage infrastructure and software development deliveries.

Black Cape recently secured a landmark $151 billion multiple-award Indefinite Delivery Contract on the Missile Defense Agency's Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program on January 21, 2026, with an ultimate completion date of December 28, 2035. SHIELD encompasses research and development, prototyping, disruptive technologies, systems engineering, weapon design, production, test and evaluation, cybersecurity, and modernization across air, missile, space, cyber, and hybrid threat domains. The initial $500 delivery order issued concurrently is firm fixed-price. Black Cape's vehicle portfolio spans multiple high-value platforms: the $950 million Advanced Battle Management System IDIQ (Air Force, running through May 2030); the $4 billion Seaport-NXG (Naval Sea Systems Command, running through January 2029); OASIS+ SB total small business set-aside (GSA, $999,999,999,999 ceiling, running through December 2029); and a GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract (awarded March 2024, ceiling $500,000, running through March 2029) staffing nine labor categories spanning cloud engineers, software developers, data scientists, and subject-matter experts at rates from $137.55 to $334.20 per hour, all requiring bachelor's degrees and security clearances.

Recent representative prime awards include the $23.5 million time-and-materials delivery order for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency advanced research and development on the KESTREL TO 3 program (awarded September 2026, completing September 2028); a $36.8 million firm fixed-price delivery order from Washington Headquarters Service for APT, EA, and AWG systems sustainment (awarded May 2025, completing April 2027); and Air Force Research Laboratory SBIR awards including a $3.2 million Direct to Phase II contract for the RUBICON platform-agnostic data storage infrastructure (awarded May 2022, completing October 2026), a $1.9 million Phase II for RUBICON partner-nation support (awarded August 2024), and Phase I and Phase II efforts on the FORECAST (Fusion of Open Source Resources for Event Classification and Alerting of Significant Threats) program totaling approximately $1.4 million (Phase I awarded August 2022, Phase II awarded February 2024). Black Cape also holds a $49 million single-award SBIR Phase III IDC with US Special Operations Command (awarded May 2022, running through May 2027) for platform-agnostic data storage infrastructure development and sustainment, with issued task orders including a $3.9 million cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery for software development at MacDill Air Force Base (May 2023) and a $2.5 million cost-plus-fixed-fee order for additional software development (June 2024).

The vendor's award activity has remained relatively flat over the past five years (2022: nine awards, 2023: five, 2024: nine, 2025: nine, 2026: four awards in source data as of September 2026), with combined potential value across all 44 prime and sub awards totaling $6.47 billion and combined obligations of $107.3 million (2% of potential value). Recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months stands at two awards with combined potential value of $60.3 million. Black Cape operates predominantly as a prime (91% of awards), building its own delivery teams; Service Contract Inventory data on file shows minimal documented sub-hours on federal service contracts above the $150,000 reporting threshold. In its limited subcontractor role, Black Cape provides software engineering and integration support to Systems & Technology Research LLC on Navy software development and ARPA-H automated medical device patching efforts (April 2025), and software engineering labor to Kratos S2 on an Air Force SBIR Phase III cosmic AES effort (January 2024), and ISR innovation and integration services to CACI Inc. – Federal (November 2025).

Black Cape's capability footprint centers on defense AI, command-and-control software, battle management systems, data infrastructure, and SBIR-driven R&D across physical sciences and engineering. The company's pricing posture on GSA labor reflects mid-to-senior technical roles: entry-level software developers price at $145.97/hr, senior data scientists at $180.77/hr, and principal software developers and subject-matter experts at $224.59 to $334.20/hr. All labor categories require security clearances and bachelor's-level education or equivalent experience, positioning Black Cape as a cleared, highly skilled technical resource for classified and unclassified defense modernization work. Combined obligations of $107.3 million against a $6.47 billion combined potential value across active IDIQs and task orders signal significant runway for future draw-down.