SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Kharros, the company building source-selection and contract-management T&E software for the U.S. government, today announced it has been selected for the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) Commercialization Fellowship, Summer 2026 cohort.
The DIU Commercialization Fellowship supports companies developing technology for national security missions, providing a structured environment to refine their products, deepen customer discovery, and explore pathways to real-world impact. Kharros joins the Summer 2026 cohort as it works to bring objective, contract-aligned evaluation to the government offices making acquisition decisions.
The government has gotten very good at buying fast. What it has lacked is a consistent way to decide what to buy: to compare contenders against the actual requirement, narrow the field with confidence, and verify that what was promised is what shows up after award. Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs) and Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) let offices solicit at the speed operators need, but the work of evaluating those submissions still falls to small teams reviewing by hand. As a single solicitation stretches into hundreds of responses, that manual review becomes the bottleneck, the step that slows every award and leaves each one exposed to protest.
Kharros is built to close that gap. Evaluating new technology has traditionally meant a slow, one-off study. Kharros turns it into a product: fast, repeatable, and vendor-neutral, applied across the full contract lifecycle so every vendor meets the same standard from downselect through delivery. The contracting officer makes every decision, and the full record is preserved.
The Fellowship is structured around exactly that kind of maturation. Over the cohort, Kharros will work directly with DIU and its government partners to pressure-test the product against real acquisition workflows, sharpen its fit to how contracting offices actually operate, and widen the set of offices putting evidence-based evaluation into practice.
"The Fellowship puts us in the room with the people who live this problem every day, and that proximity is the point," said Ceon Jones, Co-Founder of Kharros. "Every conversation with a contracting office tells us something we can't learn from the outside. Our job over this cohort is to listen hard, refine fast, and come out with a product that fits the way the government actually buys."
About Kharros
Kharros builds productized test and evaluation infrastructure and full lifecycle contract management systems for national security. Government teams use it to buy faster with independent evidence. Vendors use it to prove performance and build trust before award. Founded to close the evaluation gap in modern acquisition, Kharros grew out of a joint DIU, USSF, and AFRL project on how best-in-class AI/ML systems should be evaluated. That work led to a broader conviction: commercial products need commercial-grade tests.
Media Contact
Kharros, Inc.
contact@kharros.com
www.kharros.com
