AI-Enabled Market Intelligence for Acquisition Success: Transforming How the Pentagon Conducts Market Research

As defense acquisition organizations pursue speed, agility, and better decision-making, the market research phase is emerging as a prime candidate for transformation through artificial intelligence. Traditionally labor-intensive and fragmented, market research often relies on manual reviews of disparate data sources, limiting the government’s ability to rapidly understand commercial capabilities, supplier landscapes, cost drivers, and emerging technologies. This session explores how AI-enabled tools and techniques can augment, not replace, acquisition professionals, improving the quality, consistency, and timeliness of market research that informs requirements, acquisition strategy, and risk reduction.

Building on acquisition modernization initiatives and lessons learned across government and industry, this discussion will examine how AI can be responsibly integrated into market research workflows to support evidence-based acquisition decisions. Participants will hear from practitioners applying AI to real-world acquisition challenges and gain practical insights into how AI can strengthen market intelligence while preserving human judgment and accountability.

Key topics will include:

• The evolving role of AI in market research, including automated discovery, synthesis, and comparison of commercial capabilities, vendors, and technologies.
• Common pain points in traditional market research and how AI-assisted approaches can reduce manual effort, improve traceability, and increase analytical rigor.
• AI-enabled analysis of industry engagement artifacts (e.g., RFIs, Sources Sought, white papers, capability briefings) to extract patterns, gaps, and opportunities.
• Using AI to support acquisition planning, including alignment of market research outputs to requirements development, acquisition strategies, and independent cost estimates (IGCEs).
• Opportunities and risks of AI-assisted market research, including data quality, bias, transparency, and the importance of keeping humans in the loop.
• Best practices for documenting and validating AI-informed market research in a manner consistent with FAR requirements and audit expectations.
  
  

Join government and industry leaders for a forward-looking conversation on how AI-enabled market research can move acquisition teams from static, document-driven processes to dynamic, insight-driven decision support, enabling faster, smarter, and more resilient defense acquisitions.