Lightning Rod Labs Assessed 'Awardable' for DARPA ERIS Marketplace

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, July 15, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Lightning Rod Labs, a leading provider of AI-powered predictive intelligence, has achieved "Awardable" status in DARPA's Expedited Research Implementation Series (ERIS) Marketplace. DARPA's ERIS Marketplace is a transformative digital platform designed to accelerate acquisition velocity and advance national security innovation.

Lightning Rod Labs trains AI to make accurate, reliable predictions from unstructured data. The company's proprietary framework learns directly from real-world outcomes, so organizations can spin up custom predictors from any data stream—no curated labels, feature engineering, or extraction pipelines required—that outperform larger general-purpose LLMs on prediction tasks. Beyond defense applications, the technology shows promise for use cases that traditionally rely on manual analysis, such as geopolitical forecasting, demand planning, watch-office early warning, and AML compliance screening.

"Strategic decision-making depends on assumptions about the future—but predicting the future is hard. Nowhere is this more critical than in national defense," said Ben Turtel, Founder and CEO of Lightning Rod Labs. "We're honored to be recognized for our innovation and excited to help defense partners leverage predictive AI to anticipate and respond to emerging threats."

Lightning Rod Labs was recognized among a competitive field of applicants to the ERIS Marketplace whose solutions demonstrated innovation and potential impact on DoD missions. Government customers interested in viewing the video solution, "Training AI to Predict the Future", can create an ERIS Marketplace account at www.darpaconnect.us/eris.


###
About Lightning Rod Labs:
Lightning Rod Labs helps organizations turn raw, unstructured data into well-calibrated predictions. The company's Foresight AI helps organizations stay ahead of emerging threats by continuously scanning public and private data sources to detect potential issues before they materialize. Founded by ex-Google engineers Ben Turtel and Danny Franklin, Lightning Rod Labs uses a proprietary framework that trains models to predict the future using self-play on real-world outcomes—without curated labels or human input. These models deliver higher accuracy at a fraction of the size of general-purpose LLMs, can be fine-tuned for specific use cases in days, and deploy flexibly from cloud to fully on-premises environments.

Media Contact: press@lightningrod.ai

About the ERIS Marketplace:
The DARPA Expedited Research Implementation Series (ERIS) Marketplace is a transformative digital platform designed to accelerate acquisition velocity and advance national security innovation. All 7-minute awardable solutions housed in the repository have been assessed through complex scoring rubrics and competitive procedures and are readily available for selection, negotiation, and award by Government customers with a Marketplace account. By streamlining the procurement process, the ERIS Marketplace empowers DoD organizations to rapidly acquire disruptive technologies that address the evolving challenges of defense and security. Industry and academia are encouraged to showcase their innovative solutions, connecting directly with DARPA and other government customers seeking revolutionary research and technology. Learn more at: www.darpaconnect.us/eris.

Media Contact: outreach@darpa.mil

Benjamin Turtel
Lightning Rod Labs
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
X
Other