digital-certification
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Istari Digital
Istari Digital is a Cambridge, Massachusetts software company building a digital engineering platform that connects fragmented engineering data - models, simulations, requirements and test artifacts - across teams, suppliers and classified environments. Founded in 2022 by former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper, the company aims to let regulated industries like aerospace and defense validate, secure and certify complex systems in minutes instead of months. Its flagship effort, Flyer One, is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to make a modified X-56A the world's first digitally certified aircraft.
Will Roper
Will Roper is a physicist-turned-defense-strategist who now runs Istari Digital, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup trying to build an 'engineering metaverse' where machines from satellites to medicines can be designed, tested and certified entirely in software. Before founding Istari in 2022, he was the 13th Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, steering a roughly $40-60 billion annual portfolio, and earlier the founding director of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office, where he turned a $50 million budget into a $1.5 billion-plus prototype machine that produced drone swarms, hypervelocity guns and fighter-jet AI co-pilots. A Rhodes Scholar with an Oxford doctorate in string theory, he names his ventures after Tolkien wizards and argues America must learn to make hardware behave like software before its rivals do.