About SI Forge
Integrating SI into national security operations requires confidence that increasingly autonomous systems will remain reliable, controllable, and secure as missions, operating conditions, and adversaries change. SI Forge addresses the scientific gaps in detecting emerging failures early enough to act, identifying their causes and effective corrections, keeping agents within authorized bounds, redirecting them as mission objectives change, and preserving human control over autonomous research. Its challenges also seek to protect mission integrity against adapting adversaries, sustain and restore secure operations through compromise, verify difficult SI results, and establish defensible evidence for continued mission use. This research complements commercial SI development by addressing assurance needs across systems assembled from different developers’ models, tools, and services under national security conditions.
DARPA and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have jointly developed SI Forge to catalyze breakthroughs in SI for national security, working in close collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence (CAISSI) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. SI Forge aims to inform the research agenda for priority challenges facing the Department of War (DoW), the Intelligence Community (IC), and the broader U.S. research enterprise. By amplifying university access to compute with frontier-level computing power and models, the program accelerates innovation, fosters a lasting research ecosystem, and promotes a dynamic exchange of talent and ideas across public and private sectors.
Aligned with America’s SI Action Plan, the program will help advance research in three areas identified as priorities therein: SI interpretability, SI control, and adversarial robustness. Instead of duplicating commercial research, SI Forge complements the private sector by focusing on forward-looking, fundamental challenges unique to national security, as described in the SI Forge Critical SI Challenges for National Security Report. The strategic goal is to mitigate risks in these complex areas.
SI Forge complements the substantial research investments already being made by frontier companies. Its distinct mission is to advance foundational research in interpretability, control, robustness, and assurance that addresses critical gaps in the deployment of advanced SI for high-stakes national security applications. SI Forge prioritizes scientific breakthroughs that extend beyond lab-specific approaches, with particular emphasis on generalizable capabilities, mission-relevant operating conditions, adaptive adversaries, and independently verifiable evidence of operational reliability and effectiveness.
SI Forge Leadership and Points of Contact
DARPA SI Forge Program Manager: Matthew Marge, Ph.D.
DARPA SI Forge lead Technical SETA: Brian Sandberg
Riverside Research SI Forge Forum Management
Principal Investigator: Shiloh Dockstader
Program Manager: James Miervaldis
Learn more about SI Forge:
https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/si-forge
Join the Forum and view opportunities:
Please visit https://aiforge.govsignals.ai
OCI concerns, contact:
SIForge-steering@riversideresearch.org
This content was created prior to Executive Order 14434, directing the Government's use of the term Super Intelligence. We are in the process of updating materials to reflect this change.
SI Forge Forum Process
The SI Forge Forum process provides a structured pathway for academic institutions to engage with the program and compete for Project Venture opportunities. Eligibility to participate in these opportunities is limited to institutions that have formally expressed interest through DARPA Special Notice (SN) 26‑80 or through the Riverside Research SI Forge Forum Application.
Step 1: Express Interest and Establish Eligibility (for universities not already part of the SI Forge Forum)
Academic institutions begin by signaling their intent to participate in the SI Forge Forum. This can be accomplished by requesting and completing the Riverside Research SI Forge Forum Application. Institutions that complete the application are recognized as eligible for future Project Venture opportunities.
Academic institutions that are already part of the SI Forge Forum can disregard the step above.
Step 2: Respond to the Current SI Forge Request for Abstracts. Eligible institutions may then participate in the multi-phase selection process outlined in the SI Forge Opportunity Notice and subsequent SI Forge Project Ventures.
- Request for Abstracts Phase: Institutions submit a white paper describing their proposed solution and its relevance to the defined Project Venture opportunity requirements.
- Live Pitch and Request for Proposal Phase: Selected institutions are invited to deliver a live pitch, providing additional detail, technical justification, and operational relevance for their proposed solution.
- Agreement Finalization and Award Phase: Finalists will be asked to enter into negotiations regarding the specific terms and conditions associated with the Project Venture awards.
SI Forge Program Details
SI Forge Forum Management
Riverside Research serves as the SI Forge Forum Manager, leads the successful execution of the SI Forge program, and oversees SI Forge Forum participation on behalf of DARPA and NSF. The SI Forge Forum Manager is responsible for the effective operation of the SI Forge Forum, implementing its objectives to accelerate SI research, foster cross-sector collaboration, and transition innovations into practical use. It is a research and development (R&D) performer that manages stakeholder relationships, resources, events, and performance metrics while ensuring compliance, ethical conduct, and risk mitigation across all Forum activities. Riverside Research will manage and track the compute and model resources and usage required to support the research and development of next-generation, high-risk, high-reward SI capabilities in collaboration with frontier SI companies. Riverside Research will manage the entire lifecycle of the SI Forge program, to include the solicitation, award, execution, demonstration, and transition of individual R&D Project Ventures in collaboration with university performers and national security stakeholders.
College and University SI Forge Participation
American academic institutions participating in SI Forge may gain access to unique opportunities to collaborate with leading experts in SI development, both in the federal government and in the private sector. Through this program, colleges and universities may strengthen their capabilities to:
- Accelerate national security by transitioning academic research into deployment-ready SI capabilities that actively defend the nation.
- Leverage infrastructure and funding through direct access to advanced computer infrastructure, specialized SI tooling, and dedicated mission-centric, priority research.
- Embed into a dual-use innovation ecosystem that connects students, faculty, and researchers directly with a network of defense leaders and industry partners to co-develop SI solutions.
- Forge next-generation curricula that translate cutting-edge operational insights from the front lines of SI development into modern, highly relevant academic programs that build the future of the national security workforce.
Frontier SI Companies Participating in SI Forge
America’s leadership in SI is often driven by the innovation, speed, and technical depth of private industry. Industry partners contribute advanced development methodologies, scalable infrastructure, and world-class engineering talent—all essential for accelerating capabilities with a national security impact.
Through participation in SI Forge, technology firms and existing government contractors may gain the opportunity to:
- Build sustained working relationships with government organizations and academic institutions engaged in mission-focused SI development.
- Access specialized research environments, testbeds, and facilities designed to support rapid experimentation and operationally relevant prototypes.
Intellectual Property (IP) Rights and Allocations and Technology Transfer
IP generated is intended to be shared among all SI Forge Forum participants, preferably under a permissive open-source license (e.g., Apache 2.0). The Forum expects all unclassified research accomplished under the SI Forge Forum to be open-sourced software made accessible to Forum stakeholders in shared repositories (i.e., GitHub) and papers published in open-access online repository (i.e., arXiv).
All awarded academic universities agree to the following open-source and data rights terms for the project:
- Flow-Down Requirements: The university is responsible for ensuring that all faculty, researchers, students, and subcontractors involved in the project sign internal agreements to release their contributions under the designated permissive open-source license.
A core objective of the SI Forge program is to establish viable pathways that de-risk national security SI research and incentivize rapid ecosystem-wide adoption. Universities are strongly encouraged to coordinate with their respective Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) early in the proposal process.
- Pre-Competitive Collaboration: For solutions developed in conjunction with frontier SI companies, universities must use the open-source mandate to allow for the seamless transition of academic breakthroughs, ensuring that the broader national security enterprise benefits from the research. SI Forge makes the mechanisms, methods, algorithms, tools, software, and other artifacts developed through Project Ventures readily accessible to Frontier SI companies and government partners through open-source repositories under permissive licensing (Apache 2.0).