Seattle-based Integrate has been awarded a $25 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to support the deployment of its multiplayer project management software for government teams — and for the commercial space contractors they’re working with.
The award marks a new chapter for the startup. It’s also a new chapter for the Space Force, which is keen to upgrade its tools for keeping track of high-stakes space initiatives such as the National Security Space Launch program.
Integrate CEO and co-founder John Conafay said his company’s software is analogous to “Google Docs for project management.” However, the mission gets more complicated when the software has to work in the secure environment required for national security projects.
“We get very, very detailed and security-conscious with our permissioning and the way it’s laid out,” he told GeekWire. The tool is built so that multiple stakeholders in a project can see “exactly what they need to see at any given time, and can adjust it so you don’t have to wait for multiple weeks or multiple months to find out you have a three-month delay to your schedule,” he said.
The software has been built from the ground up on AWS GovCloud to operate in classified and hybrid environments. Integrate says it’s already being used by early adopters — including the managers of an active mission to send astronauts to the International Space Station, and a company that is building one of the world’s largest satellite constellations. Conafay declined to name those customers, but it doesn’t take much imagination for space industry observers to guess who they might be.
The newly announced Space Force award follows up on a $1.25 million contract that Integrate won in 2023 to support launch mission management and coordination at the Space Systems Command’s Mission Manifest Office. Now the Mission Manifest Office is kicking things up a notch with the new five-year contract.
“This is a fully commercial contract, which means they’re purchasing licenses and services with operational funds,” Conafay said. “A very small part of the contract is to build a few features for them specifically, but they’re all applicable to our commercial applications as well.”
Conafay noted that the applications aren’t limited to the space frontier. “We’re speaking to multiple automotive companies, both electric and not, who see a pretty significant application for this — anybody who’s dealing with hundreds if not thousands of supply-chain partners and needs to keep them coordinated,” he said. “We’ve had customers in renewables and maritime as well.”
The Space Force contract will allow Integrate to expand its workforce. “We’re at about 13 people right now,” Conafay said. “We’re hiring four on top of that so that we can deliver faster — you know, ‘underpromise and overdeliver’ to the Space Force and our stakeholders, who have been just incredible to us.”
It’s already been quite a ride for Conafay, whose résumé includes stints at the U.S. Air Force and at a series of commercial space ventures. In the three years since he and his fellow co-founders started up the company in 2022, Integrate has raised about $5 million in investment — and has started turning a profit.
“Being profitable in three years for a venture-funded software startup is no small feat, much less with government,” Conafay said.
Read the full article here
