The US Air Force has exercised an additional US$2.9 million option under Palladyne AI’s STRATFI contract, increasing the total award to more than US$10.6 million to support the continued development of the company’s Palladyne IQ embodied AI architecture for autonomous robotic systems.
Palladyne AI says US Air Force has exercised a contractual option on its STRATFI (Strategic Funding Increase) contract, adding US$2.9 million in new funding and increasing the total contract value to more than US$10.6 million. The option exercise reflects the Air Force’s continued satisfaction with the performance and progress of Palladyne AI’s Palladyne IQ embodied AI architecture for autonomous robotic systems.
“This option exercise is exactly the kind of milestone we set out to achieve,” said Ben Wolff, President & Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI.
“When a customer like the US Air Force commits nearly $3 million more after seeing your technology perform, that is an unambiguous signal. Palladyne IQ’s AI architecture is working. The Air Force is a demanding customer operating in complex, real-world environments, and it has extended the contract. We believe this program is the proof point for what Palladyne IQ and its architecture can do at scale, and for the enormous market opportunity that lies ahead in autonomous defense robotics.”
The STRATFI programme, formally titled Cybernetic Training for Autonomous Robots – Human Augmentation via Generalizable Mobile Autonomous Robot Dexterity (C-H), was originally awarded in September 2023.
Since then, the Air Force has increased its investment as the technology has matured and demonstrated results, including completion of the first phase in October 2024 and additional funding in April 2025. This latest option exercise continues that pattern of performance-driven reinvestment.
The newly obligated funding covers a set of advanced demonstration milestones, including:
- Human-guided machine learning on real robotic platforms, enabling robots to learn complex manipulation tasks autonomously with minimal demonstrations.
- Mixed-reality teleoperation enabling seamless collaboration between human operators and remote subject matter experts.
- Autonomous task execution on robotic platforms in Air Force-relevant mission scenarios.
Palladyne IQ is Palladyne AI’s flagship embodied AI platform, purpose-built to deliver closed-loop autonomy for robotic systems operating in dynamic, unstructured and contested environments.
Unlike conventional automation, Palladyne IQ enables robots to learn from as few as one to five human demonstrations, generalise that learning across variations in environment and task and execute autonomously without cloud connectivity, a critical capability for defence applications where communications may be degraded or denied.
The platform is hardware-agnostic, integrating across robotic systems and sensor suites, and supports real-time sensor fusion and adaptive AI at the edge.
These characteristics make Palladyne IQ well suited not only for the Air Force’s evolving requirements in autonomous robotics but for a broad range of defence and industrial applications.
The US military’s investment in autonomous robotic systems is accelerating. The Air Force’s continued commitment to this programme, now totalling more than US$10.6 million, reflects a customer that views Palladyne IQ and its architecture as a platform with operational relevance.
