MSBAI, a Los Angeles-based pioneer in hybrid intelligence systems for engineering automation, has secured a $2 million Phase III contract from the U.S. Department of Defense for GURU Generation 2. This sole-source award elevates MSBAI to the rare 'SBIR unicorn' status, signifying the DoD's recognition of GURU as an essential solution for national defense applications in hypersonic vehicle development.
Addressing Critical Engineering Bottlenecks
The contract addresses a fundamental challenge in hypersonic vehicle development: the prohibitively slow and costly nature of prototyping Mach 5-plus vehicles. According to the company, setting up a single computational fluid dynamics (CFD) case still consumes hours or sometimes days, making it impractical to scale to the hundreds or thousands of simulations required for full aerodynamic databases, flight envelopes, and control-surface schedules.
GURU Generation 2 harnesses artificial intelligence inspired by cognitive frameworks like Global Workspace Theory to achieve reliable automation. Its hierarchical architecture fuses symbolic reasoning with machine learning, autonomously navigating geometry preparation, grid generation, solver configuration, solution-adaptive mesh refinement to capture shock wave and boundary layer interaction, and visualization.
Proven Performance Improvements
The platform has already demonstrated significant performance improvements at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC) with GURU Generation 1, reducing simulation failure rates from 88% to 2%. GURU Generation 2 will now scale across key Army, Navy, and Air Force supercomputers including Blueback, Carpenter, Narwhal, and Raider.
The system will train skills agents to autonomously drive workflows in packages such as Salome, GMSH, and NASA Refine for meshing; solvers including the CREATE CFD suite, SU2, and OpenFOAM; and ParaView for visualization.
Strategic Integration with DoD Infrastructure
The High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) serves as the primary customer for this technology. Supporting over 5,000 defense scientists and engineers with premier supercomputers, networks, and expertise, HPCMP drives mission-critical advancements under Director Kelly Dalton's leadership, with emphasis on AI integration and workforce empowerment.
"This contract lets us plug GURU straight into the DoD's supercomputing nervous system," said Allan Grosvenor, CEO of MSBAI. "What once took a team hours or days to configure for a single hypersonic CFD simulation—riddled with failure risks—now takes minutes, and GURU can replicate that setup across thousands of cores."
Bryon Foster, Chief of the AFRL DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC), noted: "The big thing we use these systems to do is modeling and simulation—we're trying to drive shorter timelines and accelerate. Tools like GURU help us run higher-fidelity calculations faster and cheaper, especially for regimes—like hypersonic flight—that can't be fully tested on a range."
Technology Development and Future Applications
MSBAI evolved the GURU technology through fundamental R&D conducted on DOE flagship exascale systems, including the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory, running 2,000+ node jobs to advance its hybrid intelligence capabilities for engineering design and energy applications.
This Phase III milestone positions MSBAI for further DoD investments in licenses and additional features. The company, founded in 2017, focuses on hybrid intelligence systems that automate complex engineering workflows using advanced AI, with applications spanning aviation, spaceflight, and energy sectors.
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