Contest Rules & Eligibility Requirements

1. Eligibility & Technology Scope

• Entity & Stage: Applicants must be U.S.-based businesses at Seed stage or later.

• Intellectual Property: Applicants must own the rights to any intellectual property related to the company’s business. Applicants shall retain all ownership, right, title and interest to their materials and product development work.

• Hardware Requirement: Submissions must incorporate a tangible physical, hardware, or material component. Pure software applications are ineligible.

• Defense & Energetics Focus: Proposed technologies must directly support the research, development, demonstration, testing, scale-up, manufacturing, or transition of solutions for the domestic U.S. defense or energetics industrial base. Eligible projects must enable domestic production of chemicals, materials, propellants or other energetics, components, delivery systems, or prototype systems.

• Dual-Use Evaluation: Priority consideration will be given to technologies with viable additional commercial applications in addition to defense sectors.

• Phase 2 Live Pitch: Finalists selected for Phase 2 must pitch live and in-person to remain eligible for an award.

• Government Restrictions: Companies and their leadership must be fully eligible to work with the U.S. federal government and the U.S. Department of War.

2. General Information About Awards

• Awards go to Companies: Award money will be given to the company participating in the competition (the “awardee”) and not to any individual person. 

• Taxes: Each Company and individual will be responsible for their own tax liabilities in connection with the award.

• Award Conditions: Awardees must commit to both A) a schedule of milestones and B) tenancy at Munitions Campus to receive awarded funds. Further details on both of these criteria are below. 

3. Award Payment & Milestone Schedule 

• Milestone Schedule: These are designed to track the development of a specific technology or capability that award funds will be used for. This schedule will be for a specific amount of time and have as many milestones as is relevant for the work, within reason. 

  • How the Schedule is Set: This schedule must be mutually agreed upon by ACMI Federal and the awardee within 30 days of the award ceremony. Awardees are encouraged, but not required to, make an initial proposal for a milestone schedule.

    • Payment Sequencing:

      • Initial Advance (15% of total funds awarded): Disbursed upon initial mutual execution of the milestone schedule.

      • Milestone Payments (60% of total funds awarded): Distributed in tranches tied to mutually agreed-upon milestones in the milestone schedule.

      • Final Payment (25% of total funds awarded): Disbursed upon formal acceptance of the final deliverable and completion of the milestone schedule.

4. Location & Occupancy Requirements

• Campus Occupancy: Awardees must execute and maintain occupancy at Munitions Campus for a minimum term of 3 years.

• Space Allocation: Awardees will receive 150 sq. ft. of rent-free space at Munitions Campus. Awardees will be eligible for award funds if they use only this 150 sq. ft. space. Additional space may be leased at prevailing market rates at the discretion of the awardee. 

5. Additional Terms

• The only individuals who will have access to your submission pitch decks for Phase 1 will be the assigned judges and members of ACMI Group who have agreed to maintain confidentiality of all submissions. They have been asked to treat your work product with the same care and respect for confidentiality and to remove themselves from judging your plan if they have a conflict of interest.

• Applicants should not disclose critical proprietary information or classified information that could A) prevent them from gaining patent protection for the idea if a provisional patent application has not already been filed and/or B) be illegal to disclose or jeopardize national security. 

• Applicants and participants waive their right to sue the organizer over judging decisions, technical glitches, or loss of business opportunity.

• Organizer reserves the right to confirm that a company meets any requirements set forth herein and can reject any application or disqualify any company at any time for reasons including, but not limited to:

  • Violation of any of these terms or any competition rules

  • Violation of any local, state or federal law

  • Application does not present sufficient content or material appropriate to send to judges for evaluation and feedback