Adriana Avakian

Founder and CEO TheIncLab

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Adriana Avakian founded TheIncLab and leads it as Chief Executive Officer. The company calls itself the first human-centered AI lab built for the fight, and the phrasing carries its whole thesis. Defence artificial intelligence generally fails not because the models are inadequate but because the operator will not trust them, and an unused capability is no capability at all. Avakian’s position is that AI in this domain has to be engineered around the human being able to trust it — systems that learn and collaborate with a person in real time rather than presenting them with an unexplained answer. TheIncLab builds accordingly, developing platforms for air combat training, naval mission planning, battle management and autonomous systems for United States Department of Defense customers, and doing it alongside the operators who will use them. Its internal standard is “DEMO or DIE”, and it reports having carried more than 150 prototypes from concept into operational use.

Career Highlights

• Founded TheIncLab and leads it as Chief Executive Officer, building what the company describes as the first human-centered artificial intelligence experience.
• Delivered more than 150 prototypes from concept to operational capability under an explicit “DEMO or DIE” standard of accountability.
• Built platforms across air combat training, naval mission planning, battle management and autonomous systems for Department of Defense customers including the Missile Defense Agency and Customs and Border Protection.
• Expanded the company to four United States sites — McLean, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; Tampa, Florida; and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• Established AI+X innovation labs and ran applied defence research through them with the University of South Florida and the University of Tampa, involving student researchers directly.
• Named a Forbes “Next 1000” honouree in 2021.
• Received the 2022 Unity Collaborator Award for implementing AI in defence and aerospace systems.
• Won the 2022 University of Maryland Alumni Association EnTERPreneur Award, ten years after graduating.
• Placed TheIncLab on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, the Department of Defense’s accelerated route for adopting AI, machine learning and analytics.

Professional Journey

Avakian graduated from the University of Maryland in 2012 and founded TheIncLab. No employer between the two has been documented in any public source, which suggests she moved into building the company early rather than through a conventional defence-contracting career — a point worth noting given the industry she entered, where incumbency and cleared experience normally gate entry.

The company’s founding proposition was contrarian for its moment. At a time when the dominant framing of military AI was autonomy — systems that act without a human — Avakian built around the opposite premise: that the limiting factor is trust, and that trust is an engineering requirement rather than a training problem. As she has put it, AI requires a system designed around humans being able to trust. TheIncLab’s work is accordingly described as human-centered AI, where the computer system learns and collaborates with the operator in real time and the interface is treated as part of the capability rather than a wrapper on it.

The delivery model is as distinctive as the design philosophy. TheIncLab embeds with the operators who will use what it builds, and holds itself to “DEMO or DIE” — a working prototype, demonstrated, or nothing. In a sector where programmes routinely consume years before producing anything a user can touch, that is a commercial position as much as a cultural one, and the company reports over 150 prototypes taken through to operational solutions on the strength of it. Its named platforms include Nyx, LEAP Aether, Kronos, Iris, Wolfpack and Atum, spanning all-domain operations, airspace management and autonomous systems, with customers including the Missile Defense Agency and Customs and Border Protection.

Avakian grew the company geographically along the lines of where its customers are: McLean in the Washington metro area, Tampa near the Florida defence and special operations community, Nashville, and Colorado Springs, the centre of United States space and missile defence. Each hosts an AI+X lab, and she has used them to build university research partnerships — with the University of South Florida and the University of Tampa in Florida — that put student researchers onto applied defence problems. That serves as both a research channel and a recruiting pipeline into a field with a chronic cleared-talent shortage.

Recognition followed in 2021 and 2022: a place on the Forbes “Next 1000” list, the Unity Collaborator Award for implementing AI in defence and aerospace systems, and the University of Maryland Alumni Association’s EnTERPreneur Award. TheIncLab is also listed on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, the Department of Defense’s mechanism for buying AI and analytics capability faster than standard acquisition allows.

Education

University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business

Bachelor’s degree, Business, class of 2012