Figure Eight Federal Collaborates With Microsoft to Redefine the AI Lifecycle in Defense
We are excited to work with Microsoft to provide government agencies with commercially proven capabilities to drive data quality, which are fundamental to unleashing AI innovation
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'Microsoft's integration with Figure Eight Federal's labeling and orchestration platform is a significant step toward enabling a data labeling copilot for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community,' said Leigh Madden, vice president of national security at Microsoft. 'By integrating Azure OpenAI services with their platform, we have already demonstrated how our combined capabilities can enhance data operations. We are excited to work with Figure Eight Federal to further expand the use of generative AI and drive greater efficiency and innovation across mission-critical data environments.'
'By coupling our data labeling technology with Microsoft's cloud-native capabilities for data management, MLOps, and generative AI, we deliver a holistic, robust, and highly scalable solution to accelerate AI innovation for defense applications,' said Tim Klawa, head of product at Figure Eight Federal. 'The result is that we not only reduce operational costs but also ensure AI models are more transparent, trustworthy, and secure against adversarial threats.'
F8F's integration with Microsoft, available for deployment into any client networks, provides commercial best practices into the defense and intelligence sector, enabling a data-centric, quality-first, SME-driven approach to rapid model optimization.
Through this collaboration, along with rigorous government testing, F8F and Microsoft address one of the most significant challenges in AI development for the defense sector: the lack of transparency and data governance that often surrounds data labeling, model training, and evaluation. By providing robust data governance and validated quality into every aspect of the AI pipeline, F8F and Microsoft's combined technology offers a government guided approach to AI development that mitigates risk with real-time transparency and accountability, accelerating the ability to develop AI in a responsible and trustworthy way.
The modular architecture of Artemis, coupled with Azure PaaS, enables agencies to rapidly stand up end-to-end data and AI capabilities without traditional high-cost and rigid licensing models seen in the defense and intelligence sector. Instead, agencies can leverage a consumption-based approach. The transparency, observability, and ease of replaceability of each sub-component enable agencies to easily plug-and-play any third-party vendor into the environment and maintain full data governance. F8F and Microsoft's combined expertise positions this integrated solution as a critical enabler for AI solutions in defense, providing a transparent, secure, and adaptive foundation for building trustworthy AI that can be rapidly optimized for mission-critical applications.
'We are excited to work with Microsoft to provide government agencies with commercially proven capabilities to drive data quality, which are fundamental to unleashing AI innovation,' stated Vinay Malkani, chief executive officer of Figure Eight Federal.
About Figure Eight Federal:
Figure Eight Federal (F8F) is Appen's FOCI-mitigated arm dedicated to serving the U.S. defense and intelligence sectors. F8F delivers accurate, reliable, human-annotated datasets that power critical AI and machine learning applications. With native support for a wide range of datatypes—including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), LiDAR, and multispectral imagery—the Artemis platform enables labeling directly on data in its original form. The platform also supports benchmarking and fine-tuning of generative AI through human-in-the-loop evaluations performed by domain experts, while integrated generative AI capabilities help mitigate the programmatic risks inherent in large-scale data labeling efforts. By leveraging Azure OpenAI Service within Azure Government, F8F offers a powerful solution for unlocking domain-specific, optimized generative AI innovations tailored to defense workflows.
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