A national cybersecurity company at Port San Antonio has expanded its role there with an office in a venture capital firm focused on bringing new technological capabilities to the U.S. military.
Peraton, a defense contractor based in Reston, Va., is opening an office at Capital Factory, whose Center for Defense Innovation has space in the Boeing Center at Tech Port, the company announced last week.
It’s the fourth such company to establish or grow a presence at Port San Antonio since the fall, when IntelliGenesis, Leidos and GDIT announced new developments at the former Kelly Air Force Base.
With more than 18,000 employees worldwide and 900 already in Texas, Peraton and port officials hope the new office will help the company land more contracts while growing opportunities across the city’s cybersecurity industry that spans federal agencies, businesses, research facilities and universities.
The company already has a footprint at the Port with several hundred people supporting Defense Health Agency and military medical system information technology contracts. It also has office space and research agreements with the National Security Collaboration Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The new space at Capital Factory, Peraton officials said, will enable it to reach beyond its traditional constraints by having an unclassified space to bring in people for collaborating, recruiting and demonstrating capabilities.
“This location enables collaboration with mission stakeholders at the speed of the need unencumbered by physical distance,” Tom Afferton, president of Peraton’s cyber mission sector, said in a statement.
“Capital Factory has that technology incubator ethos to it,” said Jeff Berlet, senior technology director for Peraton’s cyber mission sector. “It’s all about technology and being innovative, and that’s again where we’re going to be able to bring some of our researchers, some of our research scientists, principal investigators that are doing research from across the company, not necessarily tied to those customers in San Antonio, but bringing best practices and innovations to San Antonio for demonstration.”
Will Garrett, the port’s vice president of talent and technology development, said port officials have known Peraton — and smaller companies that it has acquired — for about six years. He sees the company opening a new office that’s not tied to specific contracts as exciting.
“It’s bringing their cyber and electronic warfare capabilities to San Antonio in a very meaningful way,” Garrett said. “What excites the Port is to have Peraton with a formal office in town but also bringing a breadth and depth of their capabilities across the enterprise that really haven’t been in San Antonio previously.”
Capital Factory is one of the biggest venture capital funds in Texas, and companies like Peraton and IntelliGenesis opening offices at the site is good news for future business, Garrett said.
“It allows us to connect founders and entrepreneurs and startups in San Antonio — and specifically from our campus — to a hyperactive venture arm that’s looking at deals statewide and engaging enterprises statewide,” he said. “It’s yet another tool that the port and Capital Factory can use to help small companies develop, test, validate and scale technology right out of the port’s campus.”
As part of San Antonio’s tech community, Peraton believes its experience as a mission capability integrator and longtime mission partner can further support the U.S. Air Force and intelligence community, Afferton said in a statement.
Berlet said the new office at the port will collaborate with the company’s researchers at UTSA who are looking at cybersecurity aspects of protecting critical infrastructure and tracking misinformation.
He said the research is using “open source information — effectively social media and other types of unclassified data — and understanding misinformation, thought activity, deep fakes ... all that type of misuse of information and finding ways to use artificial intelligence, machine learning and large language models, which UTSA is perfectly suited for.”
The company also sponsors the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association annual Alamo ACE conference, which drew roughly 4,000 people last year.
Peraton’s growing presence in San Antonio is also bringing jobs. The company has about 35 positions open for local cybersecurity operations.
(c)2024 the San Antonio Express-News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
