BigBear.ai
BigBear.ai Holdings, Inc. · Coding
BigBear.ai is a defense and security technology company that builds decision intelligence and secure generative AI for government agencies and large enterprises. Its platforms cover AI orchestration, biometrics and supply chain analytics.
About BigBear.ai
What Is BigBear.ai
BigBear.ai Holdings is a public company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BBAI, based in McLean, Virginia. It sells mission-ready AI to government and commercial buyers rather than a consumer app you download. The core pitch is decision intelligence: taking messy, incomplete data from many sources and turning it into something an analyst or commander can act on quickly.
The company works across defense, intelligence, homeland and border security, travel and trade, and manufacturing and supply chain. Its portfolio mixes original products with acquisitions. Ask Sage, bought for $250 million in 2025, is the secure generative AI platform. Pangiam brings facial recognition and threat detection for airports and customs. CargoSeer handles invoice fraud checks for air cargo.
The main constraint is who can buy it. This is enterprise and government software, sold through demos and yearly licenses, and there's no self-serve signup. A small team or an individual has no realistic path to using the platform, and pricing isn't published on the website.
Getting Started
- Request a demo through the BigBear.ai site and describe your mission or operational problem
- Scope the deployment: cloud-hosted, dedicated tenant, or an air-gapped appliance for disconnected environments
- Connect your data sources and pick the models you want from the model-agnostic catalog
- Roll out to your teams, set token budgets in the admin console, and monitor usage from the dashboard
Product Information
A quick look at BigBear.ai's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Defense and intelligence analysts
- Border and customs agencies
- Supply chain and logistics managers
- Enterprise IT and security leads in regulated industries
Tasks
- Drafting and summarizing sensitive documents
- Automating analyst workflows
- Screening people and cargo
- Detecting invoice fraud
- Modeling outcomes
Scenarios
- An analyst needs a summary of a classified file
- A border post processes heavy passenger volume
- A field team has no network connection
- A shipping company gets a wave of invoices
- A team compares models before a procurement decision
Key features
Secure generative AI platform
The generative AI platform, built on the technology BigBear.ai acquired with Ask Sage, gives teams one workspace to draft, summarize, automate and query data. It's model-agnostic, so you can pick from a catalog of more than 50 models per task instead of being locked to one vendor. It's built for accredited environments, with support for FedRAMP High and DoD Impact Levels 5 and 6.
Air-gapped deployment
For teams cut off from external networks, BigBear.ai offers an air-gapped hardware appliance that runs core generative AI functions on locally hosted models. Cloud configurations reach up to Department of War Cloud Impact Level 6 and support dedicated tenant environments that customers can white-label. The appliance was shown at AFCEA TechNet Augusta, running from August 17 to 20, 2026.
Agent Builder and workflows
Agent Builder is a visual, drag-and-connect canvas for creating AI agents without writing code. You link nodes to build workflows, set parameters, and reuse components across projects. A live preview runs the workflow as you build it, and a central dashboard manages and monitors everything in one place.
Digital identity and computer vision
Pangiam's biometric and computer vision tools handle facial recognition, identity verification, access control, and threat detection for airports, borders and customs. The threat detection line received Dutch national approval for airport security screening. The same technology supports monitoring and screening at high-volume checkpoints.
AI orchestration and sensor fusion
BigBear.ai manages AI models and data from distributed sensors to create interoperable edge systems. This is aimed at defense and autonomous operations, where data arrives from many hardware sources and has to be reconciled into one picture before anyone can act on it.
Supply chain analytics
CargoSeer brings AI-powered invoice fraud detection built for the air cargo sector. BigBear.ai has also deployed a supply chain security platform in Panama's Dry Canal with International Shipping Compliance, covering manufacturing, warehousing and logistics use cases.
Developer access
The platform ships with a supported REST API, a Python client, IDE extensions, and integrations with common coding tools. It also exposes OpenAI-style, Anthropic-style and Gemini-style endpoints, which lets teams move existing integrations over with less rework.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Security posture is the standout: FedRAMP High authorization and DoD IL5/IL6 support cover the compliance bars most commercial AI tools can't meet
- Model-agnostic design means you aren't tied to one provider and can swap models as your needs or costs change
- The air-gapped appliance runs core generative AI functions on locally hosted models, which matters in disconnected operational settings
- Real API access with OpenAI-style, Anthropic-style and Gemini-style endpoints makes migration from other tools more realistic
- The portfolio covers security, supply chain and identity in one vendor, which reduces the number of contracts a government buyer has to manage
Cons
- There's no free plan or public pricing, so you can't test the platform without going through a sales process
- Everything runs through demos and yearly licenses, which puts it out of reach for individuals and small teams
- The Ask Sage brand is being phased out for Department of War customers in favor of a redesigned BigBear.ai platform, so naming and packaging are in flux
- The product spans defense, borders, supply chain and identity, and a buyer who only needs one of those still deals with an enterprise-scale vendor
Frequently asked questions
It builds decision intelligence and secure generative AI for government and large enterprises. The portfolio covers a generative AI platform, facial recognition and computer vision, facial and cargo screening, supply chain analytics, and modeling and simulation.
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