Air Space Intelligence, which operates as ASI, is an American AI software company founded in 2017 and headquartered in Boston. It builds predictive decision-support systems for operational domains with high consequences and hard real-time constraints — air traffic management, military mission planning, and electricity grid operations. In June 2026 it won the largest AI-specific contract the Federal Aviation Administration has awarded, displacing Palantir Technologies as the incumbent-favoured bidder.
The FAA contract
On June 22, 2026 the Department of Transportation announced that the FAA had awarded ASI a 12-year contract worth up to $875 million covering two air traffic management programs: Flow Management Data & Services (FMDS), which analyzes flight plans, airline schedules, and real-time position updates to estimate current and future traffic flows and capacity limits, and Strategic Management of Airspace, Routing, and Trajectories (SMART), a cloud-based system that continuously analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions to predict traffic flows and give controllers and operators a shared view of the National Airspace System before flights depart (Source: reuters.com).
ASI beat Palantir and Thales for the award. A Verge account published August 18, 2026 reports that Palantir was one of three finalists, and that ASI's executive team includes four Palantir alumni — a detail that sits alongside the FAA's broader reliance on Palantir's Foundry platform since 2024, described on FAA — Federal Aviation Administration (AI Deployer) (Source: theverge.com).
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford framed the programs as giving controllers "modern, data-driven tools to better anticipate demand, balance capacity, and manage traffic before delays occur." The FAA targeted an initial operational SMART deployment for fall 2026, with the two systems deploying over 12 to 24 months (Source: prnewswire.com).
The company's stated advantage over conventional federal modernization procurement is that its platform was already running at scale before the award. Bernard Asare, ASI's President of Civil Aviation, said the company had "invested nearly $100 million of our own resources to develop a platform that is operational today." Chief executive Phillip Buckendorf attributed the modernization push to the Trump administration, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Administrator Bedford.
The award is one component of a larger program: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act authorized $12.5 billion in supplemental air traffic control funding in July 2025, of which roughly $5 billion is dedicated to software and none to personnel (Source: theverge.com).
Products and deployments
ASI's platform is marketed under the name Flyways. The company states it supports flight routing, air traffic management, and safety across a substantial share of US domestic air travel, with named airline customers including Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines. Reporting has cited a company claim that the platform manages more than 40 percent of US air traffic; the figure comes from ASI and its measurement basis is not public.
The same platform is deployed within the Department of War with the US Air Force and Indo-Pacific Command for mission planning and operational decision-making, and the company has been awarded a Defense Innovation Unit prototype Other Transaction Agreement for an AI-enabled Joint Sustainment Decision Tool. Outside aviation and defense, ASI has announced a collaboration with National Grid to deploy operational AI on the electric grid.
The company describes itself as "an American AI research and product company building frontier capabilities for high-consequence decision-making in the physical world," and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
Placement in the government AI market
ASI's win is one of the clearer instances in 2026 of a venture-backed AI-native vendor taking a large civil-agency award from an established government software contractor. The FAA case is unusual in that the agency simultaneously deepened its Palantir relationship — running its data and much of its technology stack through Foundry, and awarding an ontology-driven "Foundry Operating System" contract during 2026 — while awarding the airspace-management program to a competitor whose leadership came out of that same firm.
Relationships
- deploys-in: FAA — Federal Aviation Administration (AI Deployer) — FMDS and SMART programs, $875M/12 years
- deploys-in: U.S. Air Force (AI Deployer), DOD — Department of Defense (AI Deployer) — Flyways for mission planning; DIU prototype OTA
- deploys-in: Transportation — AI Deployment — airline flight routing and dispatch
- related: Palantir Technologies — losing finalist for SMART; source of four ASI executives
- related: DOT — Department of Transportation (AI Deployer) — announced the award
- related: Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) — awarded ASI a prototype OTA
Sources
- (Source: prnewswire.com) — ASI announcement of the FAA award, June 22, 2026 (Bedford, Buckendorf, and Asare quotations; program descriptions; customer list).
- (Source: reuters.com) — Reuters, June 22, 2026 (contract value and term).
- (Source: forbes.com) — Forbes, June 24, 2026 (founding year, headquarters, SMART description).
- (Source: theverge.com) — The Verge, August 18, 2026 (Palantir as losing finalist; four Palantir alumni; ATC funding split).