Decentralized Artificial Intelligence Through Controlled Emergence Service

The issuing agency is seeking research proposals to develop decentralized artificial intelligence through controlled emergence services. The agency needs to move beyond brittle, centralized orchestration and ad hoc agent compositions by harnessing self-organization. To solve this problem, the project aims to develop the theory and algorithms for decentralized coordination and local inference control. The scope of work covers investigating innovative approaches that combine artificial intelligence, control theory, formal methods, and game theory. This research must enable a scalable, adaptive, and resilient collective of heterogeneous AI agents that can autonomously execute sustained, long-time-horizon missions in contested environments. The agency requires these multi-agentic AI collectives to remain under control, predictable, doctrinally consistent, mission-aligned, and resilient to both benign failures and adversarial compromise. Eligibility is restricted to onshore US organizations only. The agency requires the performance of the work to be conducted offsite. The agency is looking for proposals to determine the budget for this initiative. Bidders must submit all questions regarding this opportunity no later than August 18, 2026.