Unanimous AI Wins Air Force Contract to bring Hyper-Communication Technology to Real-time Command and Control

"Hypercom" is a patented network of AI agents that connects every team member to every other in real time, replacing sequential reporting with parallel communication

ARLINGTON, Va., July 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Unanimous AI today announced it was awarded a new Phase I contract from AFWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Air Force, to bring its latest hyper-communication technology (called Hypercom AI) to real-time command and control applications. In collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, this funded effort will enable Unanimous AI to quantify the benefits of hyper-communication networks across large distributed teams engaged in urgent tasks.

Unanimous AI is a "humans-first" company founded on the mission of keeping people in the loop. We do this by ensuring that human stakeholders remain central to critical planning, decision-making, and assessments made within large organizations. Its patented network of AI agents has been shown in a variety of published papers to maximize communication efficiency and amplify team intelligence. This new funded effort will enable Unanimous AI to apply these innovations to high-stakes communication across large defense and enterprise teams engaged in mission-critical operations.

The Problem: Communication Bottlenecks in Critical Ops

In high-pressure environments traditional "One to Many" communication frameworks create severe operational bottlenecks. While a team leader can efficiently broadcast messages to a full team, receiving status updates requires team members to speak in a series or wait to be called upon sequentially. This standard communication framework often results in unnecessary delays, cognitive overload, fragmented data streams, sluggish decision-making, and dangerous distractions during chaotic time-critical scenarios.

Solution: Conversational Multiplexing using Hypercom AI

Hypercom AI™ solves this challenge with a true "Many to One" voice-based communication path, a structure previously impossible using existing voice and video technology. Leveraging Unanimous AI's Hyperchat AI™ and Hypervideo AI™ technologies, this new system will intelligently multiplex real-time conversational streams, enabling a single team leader to hold a coherent real-time discussion with dozens of individuals simultaneously, each of whom may be monitoring different threats, overseeing different regions, or coordinating different operational disciplines. It achieves this using intervening AI agents called "Conversational Surrogates" that optimally route communications among and between team members (see video).

Core capabilities include:

• Parallel Communication Channels: The platform deploys individual voice-based AI agents to up to 60 team members. This allows every member to verbally report critical information simultaneously as circumstances dictate, eliminating sequential stacking.
• Intelligent Synthesis and Clustering: The underlying AI engine processes all incoming communication channels in parallel, automatically aggregating related information.
• Prioritization and Streaming: Communicated information is triaged based on urgency and importance, then streamed to Team Leaders as a concise, natural-language content.
• Targeted Inquiries without Distraction: Leaders can request updates from specific subsets of the team. The system routes the request exclusively to those pertinent members, ensuring other team members remain focused and undisturbed.

The Hypercom AI system will intelligently multiplex real-time communications, enabling distributed team members to respond in parallel instead of stacking sequentially. This greatly increases communication efficiency while eliminating distractions and reducing cognitive load.

Commercial Impact

Beyond defense, Hypercom AI technology addresses immediate demand in the commercial sector. The enterprise collaboration market is estimated at over $60 billion for 2025, and this "conversational multiplexing" architecture provides an ideal solution for municipal and corporate control centers. Key non-defense applications include disaster response, airport operations, cybersecurity incident rooms, distributed logistics networks, and medical rapid-response teams.

"Imagine you're a team leader with 20 members in the field, each with different roles, different expertise, and different situational awareness," said David Baltaxe, President of Unanimous AI. "You ask for urgent status to guide decisions. Instead of waiting for members to sound-off in series, Hypercom lets everyone report in parallel, as AI agents optimize the information flow."

The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Air Force, have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution. The DAF began offering the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018 which expanded the range of innovations the DAF funded. On June 23, 2026, Unanimous AI was funded under this program to create and provide innovative capabilities that will strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

About Unanimous AI:
Unanimous AI is a "humans-first AI company" with the mission of keeping human expertise, wisdom, judgement, and sensibility inherent to organizational planning, problem-solving, and decision-making. The company is the creator of Swarm AI®, Hyperchat AI™, and Hypervideo AI™ technologies that harness and amplify team intelligence and is the maker of the Swarm® and Thinkscape® collaboration platforms. For more information on Unanimous AI's technology and platforms, visit Unanimous.ai

About AFWERX
As the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force and a division within the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFWERX brings American ingenuity from small businesses and startups to solve the most pressing challenges facing Airmen and Guardians. Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, AFWERX strengthens the defense industrial base by expanding access to nontraditional vendors, building new defense partnerships and accelerating the transition of critical technologies to operational capability. In fiscal year 2025, AFWERX awarded more than 1,000 contracts totaling $1.37 billion and achieved 438 Phase III transitions valued at $8.1 billion, supercharging the industrial base that supports U.S. military readiness and battlefield advantage. For more information, visit: afwerx.com.

About AFRL
The Air Force Research Laboratory is the Department of the Air Force's primary scientific research and development center and one of six centers within Air Force Materiel Command. AFRL leads the discovery, development and delivery of technologies for air, space and the multidomain. With a workforce spanning seven mission areas at more than 40 locations worldwide, AFRL conducts research ranging from basic science to advanced technology development. For more information, visit afresearchlab.com.

Company Press Contact:
Sofia Kathryn Spieler
Media Relations, Unanimous AI
315-395-1877
[email protected]

SOURCE Unanimous AI