Usul, a Y Combinator Summer 2024 company, just raised $3.3 million to solve a problem that has plagued defense contractors for decades: finding the right government contracts and the right person to call. The San Francisco startup uses artificial intelligence to parse the Pentagon's budget, map its organizational structure, and match defense technology companies with contracts they can actually win. Clients using Usul have already secured over $100 million in government contracts.

Why Is Finding Defense Contracts So Difficult?

The U.S. government and allied nations spend roughly $8 trillion annually on goods and services across more than 60 countries, according to Usul's analysis. Yet this information is scattered across multiple government databases, budget documents written in bureaucratic language, and organizational charts that few outsiders can decipher. Historically, winning a defense contract required knowing someone on the inside, attending the right conferences, or having worked at a defense contractor before.

Jarren Reid, Usul's CEO and co-founder, experienced this firsthand. He left high school to start a company, then worked at defense contractors including Palantir and MITRE before dropping out of Stanford to build Usul. "The Pentagon rewards insiders," Reid explained. "Usul is trying to sell being an insider to everyone."

"Our goal is to be the platform that allows any technology to get in the hands of any allied nation as quickly as possible," said Jarren Reid, CEO and co-founder of Usul.

Jarren Reid, CEO and co-founder, Usul

How Does Usul Help Defense Contractors Win Contracts?

• Contract Inbox: The platform ranks federal opportunities by match score, pulling from SAM.gov, DSIP, and DLA DIBBS databases so contractors stop scrolling through irrelevant solicitations and focus on realistic opportunities.
• Market Maps: Usul generates AI-drawn maps of defense markets and Program Executive Offices, showing the size of opportunities and which offices hold budget for specific technologies.
• Strategic Planning: The tool provides a workspace that tracks funding lines, active contracts, and recompetes so a company's pipeline reflects reality rather than hope.
• Direct Connections: Usul navigates the government organizational chart to identify the exact program managers and contracting officers who award deals, removing the guesswork from business development.

The company's early customers include Firestorm, OneBrief, and Overland AI, all of which have used Usul to identify and pursue opportunities. The platform essentially functions as what the company calls a "PitchBook for Government," referencing the financial data platform that investment bankers use to research companies and market opportunities.

Who Is Backing This Startup?

Usul's $3.3 million seed round, completed in May 2025, was led by Scout Ventures and includes backing from Bravo Victor VC, Y Combinator, and several defense-innovation insiders. The investor list reads like a who's who of defense technology expertise. Steve Blank, who practically invented modern startup vocabulary and co-created Stanford's Hacking for Defense program, is an investor. So is Peter Newell, who previously ran the Army's Rapid Equipping Force. When career defense insiders back a tool designed to help outsiders navigate the Pentagon, it signals confidence in the company's approach.

Usul emerged from Stanford's Hacking for Defense program before joining Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch. The company is small, with about 15 employees, which Reid and his co-founders Oliver Gomez and Joonghyun Lee view as an asset rather than a limitation. Gomez previously worked at Palantir and another Y Combinator company, while Lee brings engineering experience from Michigan and Stanford's aerospace program.

What Makes This Approach Different?

Usul does not promise to write capability statements, improve products, or guarantee contract wins. What it does change is more fundamental: it makes the contracting opportunity landscape findable. Before Usul, the path to a defense contract typically ran through personal connections, conference attendance, and institutional knowledge. The budget was enormous and written in a dialect designed to keep outsiders out. Now, a 15-person company is turning on the lights in that haystack.

The company's name carries symbolic weight. In Frank Herbert's science fiction novel "Dune," Usul is a secret name meaning "the strength of the base of the pillar." For a tool built to give outsiders leverage against an entrenched system, the reference is fitting.

Looking ahead, Usul plans to expand beyond the Department of Defense toward NATO and AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) buyers, then into other government sectors. The company's bet is straightforward: the next generation of great defense suppliers may be people nobody in the Pentagon has met yet. Usul is simply making sure they can find the door.