We're proud to share that CLIKA has been selected under the AI Joint Challenge as the sole company awarded across the entire challenge.

About the AI Joint Challenge

The AI Joint Challenge is a defense innovation initiative co-organized by Singapore's Ministry of Defence (Future Systems & Technology Directorate) and the French Ministerial Agency for Defence Artificial Intelligence (AMIAD). Launched through the Cap Vista Accelerator in April 2026, it invited companies, startups, and academia to work directly with the defense establishments of both countries, transforming proposals into trial projects with real-world operational impact, from battlefield operations to humanitarian assistance and expeditionary missions.

The challenge sought novel solutions to three problem statements:

1. Detect anomalies in complex, high-volume datasets

2. Optimize AI solutions for deployment under SWaP constraints

3. Ensure safe, reliable autonomous systems for complex environments

Awarded companies receive contracts to work directly with end users in Singapore and France, validating their solutions through trial deployments.

More on the challenge: Here

Why we won: the SWaP problem

CLIKA was selected under the second challenge statement: optimizing AI for field deployment under size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints without compromising performance.

In mission-critical environments like the field, remote operations, and contested terrain, you can't count on a compute cluster or a cloud connection. Efficient AI running on edge devices and unmanned platforms can decide the success of an operation. That's exactly the problem we automate, and two pieces of our stack earned the selection: ACE, our Automated Compression Engine that compresses models without degrading performance, and our end-to-end pipeline that takes the compressed model all the way to deployment on heterogeneous hardware.

What comes next

This selection comes with a PoC contract, putting our platform to the test in one of the most demanding, mission-critical settings there is. It also extends our government track record: following engagements with U.S. and Australian government agencies earlier this year, Singapore and France now join the list.

We're grateful to the organizers at Cap Vista, MINDEF, and AMIAD for a challenge that asked exactly the right questions.

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Compress once, Run everywhere.