IN-Q-TEL

Institutional Archetype

THE STRATEGIC INVESTOR WITH A GOVERNMENT CHECKBOOK — IQT’s own sentence: “Set up in 1999 by the CIA as an independent, not-for-profit strategic investment firm.” Its FAQ answers the question the name invites: “Is IQT a government entity? No. IQT is a not-for-profit with 501(c)3 designation in the United States. It’s not a government entity nor a part of the CIA.” Its tax return reports $114,227,920 of its $132,130,603 revenue on the line for government grants (IQT, About; ProPublica, IQT tax year to March 2025 Form 990). In the AI-evaluator layer it appears twice on the record: as a named participant in the Series A of Dreadnode, an offensive-AI evaluation and red-team company, and through its own IQT Labs, which audited an open language model and says it set out to “figure out those steps” by doing them. This profile scores the position, not the people who hold it.

The finding is a tie, not a gate. IQT approves no model and grades no lab. What it holds is a small equity stake and, by its own description, “status as a board observer” in companies, one of which sells evaluation tooling to labs, governments and enterprises, funded by a government customer base the return names only in aggregate.

Mandate & Origin

Self-description. “IQT is the most trusted leader in accelerating the transition of groundbreaking technologies from the private to the public sector to advance the national security and economic prosperity of America and its allies.” The return: “IQT IDENTIFIES, EVALUATES, AND LEVERAGES EMERGING COMMERCIAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMUNITY AND ITS ALLIES.” Schedule O: “IQT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1999 AS AN INDEPENDENT, NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION TO HELP THE CIA AND BROADER U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO IDENTIFY INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES ARISING FROM THE VENTURE-BACKED STARTUP COMMUNITY AND HARNESS THEM FOR NATIONAL SECURITY” (IQT, About; ProPublica, Form 990; ProPublica, Schedule O).

Origin and legal form. In-Q-Tel Inc, McLean, Virginia, EIN 52-2149962, tax exemption issued April 2001. The return treats IQTI LLC (investments) and IQT Labs LLC (research) as disregarded entities controlled by IQT. IQT’s site lists offices in Tysons, Menlo Park, Cambridge (Massachusetts), London, Sydney, Singapore and Munich (ProPublica, In-Q-Tel Inc; ProPublica, Schedule R; IQT, About).

How it invests, in its words. “After identifying a promising company, IQT has two primary tools for building a relationship: a technology development agreement or an equity-only investment, both of which where IQT receives a small equity stake and status as a board observer. Technology development agreements typically involve an investment between $500,000 and $3 million, and are structured as development and licensing agreements aimed at addressing the needs of the U.S. national security community. Equity-only investments typically range between $250,000 and $500,000.” Schedule O: “ON AVERAGE, FOR EVERY DOLLAR THAT IQT INVESTS IN A COMPANY, THE VENTURE CAPITAL COMMUNITY HAS INVESTED $62 WHICH HELPS ENSURE THE COMPANY HAS FINANCIAL BACKING TO MAINTAIN SUPPORT TO THE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT BEING THE SOLE OR PRIMARY FUNDER.” On the sectors: “AS OF MARCH 31, 2025, IQT TECHNOLOGY KEY FOCUS AREAS ARE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, CYBER, ENERGY, ENTERPRISE, ADVANCED HARDWARE SYSTEMS, LIFE SCIENCES AND BIOTECHNOLOGY, QUANTUM, MICROELECTRONICS, AND SPACE.” Its portfolio page prints “800+ Total Investments” (IQT, About; ProPublica, Schedule O; IQT, Portfolio).

Whom it serves. The FAQ lists its government partners: “the CIA; NGA; FBI; DIA; NSA; NRO; DHS (including CBP and other DHS components); U.S. Cyber Command; the Office of Strategic Capital; the U.K. and Australian national intelligence communities; U.S. Central Command; U.S. Space Force; and U.S. Space Command,” and says it “recently welcomed U.S. Army, the Office of Strategic Intelligence & Analysis, the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of the Navy as new partners” (IQT, About).

Who runs it. IQT’s team page lists Steve Bowsher (CEO), Matt Strottman (Chief Operating Officer), Dan Gwak (Chief Investment Officer), Megan Anderson (EVP, Technology), Liz Fox (EVP, Communications), Jennifer Nelson (EVP, International), Julianne Sobral (Chief of Staff), A.J. Bertone (EVP, Investments), Yan Zheng (EVP, Strategic Engagements) and Bruce Adams (General Counsel) (IQT, Our Team).

Governance on the return. The return for the tax year beginning 1 April 2024 reports 11 voting members of the governing body, 9 of them independent, and 206 employees. It lists S Bowsher as President/CEO and trustee (40 hours a week; $2,436,535 reportable compensation, $1,520,309 other), M Strottman ($1,170,398), G Hoyem, EVP Investments ($1,177,013), B Adams ($852,809) and others, and trustees at five hours a week with fees from $0 to $42,500: M Crow (Chairman and committee chair, $42,500), H Cox, P Barris, J Smith (each $37,500 with committee chairs), T Schlein ($35,000), M Mullen, S O’Sullivan and B Sasse ($35,000 each), G Tenet ($17,500), and S Catz, S Preston and A Chandna ($0). The return prints initials and surnames only; IQT’s pages read list no trustees (ProPublica, Form 990).

Funding & Backers

Money in. Tax year to 31 March 2025 (submitted 9 February 2026): revenue $132,130,603, of which line 1e “Government grants (contributions)” $114,227,920 (86.5 percent), investment income $15,465,649 and program service revenue $2,127,894; expenses $134,107,295; total assets $980,596,953, liabilities $100,178,887, net assets $880,418,066. The prior-year column: revenue $108,260,393, expenses $141,614,988, net assets $895,267,270 (ProPublica, In-Q-Tel Inc; ProPublica, Form 990). The return does not name which agencies the government grants come from.

Who the donors are. Schedule B names no contributors in the public copy (ProPublica, Schedule B). The only funder category the return and the FAQ name is the national-security community above.

Money out. Grants and similar amounts paid: $105,000 in the tax year to March 2025 ($1,699,303 the year before). Its portfolio investments are not grants and are not itemized on the return (ProPublica, Form 990).

A business transaction with a trustee’s company. Schedule L, Part IV: IQT “MADE $593,748 IN PAYMENTS TO GETREAL SECURITY, INC. UNDER A DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT AND AN EQUITY INVESTMENT.” Mr. Schlein, an IQT trustee, “IS A BOARD DIRECTOR OF GETREAL SECURITY, INC. AND THE GENERAL PARTNER OF BALLISTIC VENTURES I, LP, WHICH HAS AN OWNERSHIP INTEREST IN GETREAL SECURITY, INC.,” and “IS RECUSED FROM DECISION MAKING AS AN IQT TRUSTEE RELATED TO THE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS” (ProPublica, Schedule L).

Its AI-layer stakes, on the record.

Dreadnode’s release says the platform “was built in close collaboration with the company’s trusted government, enterprise, and AI labs partners” and names none, and that the investment supports “the company’s mission to advance the state of offensive security, enabling more effective evaluation, testing, and deployment of AI systems.” The pages say neither that IQT’s stake came with a development agreement nor which partners are government (Dreadnode, Series A). IQT’s own portfolio page renders by script and its Dreadnode entry did not load. See Dreadnode.

Institutional Voice & Intent

IQT’s public register is the mission statement, the FAQ and, for its lab, the practitioner’s blog. Its words on the work that touches AI evaluation:

• On its lab auditing AI: “Last year, IQT Labs decided the best way to figure out those steps was to do it themselves. It would be an experiment in action: they would start auditing AI models and tools and force themselves to figure out the necessary, practical steps along the way.” The post, 22 August 2022, covers IQT Labs’ audit of RoBERTa, “an open source, pretrained Large Language Model,” after an audit of its FakeFinder tool, and quotes Andrea Brennen, then Deputy Director of IQT Labs: “This is such a new technology, and the processes and tools and platforms for auditing it are still immature and nascent” (IQT, Interrogating RoBERTa).
• On why government buys commercial technology: “By harnessing commercially available tech, government doesn’t have to foot the bill for the ground-up development of expensive, custom-built solutions” (IQT, About).
• On what it treats as the field: “IQT’S APPROACH SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ‘GLOBAL SECURITY INVESTING’ (GSI),” its return says, with “DUAL-USE” technologies that “SUSTAIN MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE OVERMATCH AGAINST ADVERSARIES” (ProPublica, Schedule O).

Stated intent: Move commercial technology into the national-security community and its allies through small equity stakes, development agreements and advice (return mission and About page).

Observed intent: Consistent on the record: an investor in an offensive-AI evaluation company, a lab that audits models, AI first in its list of focus areas.

Gap: The record names one evaluator and no amount. The portfolio page’s count (800+) and its filter for AI cannot be read without scripts, so the number of AI-evaluation, red-team or AI-security companies in its portfolio is unknown from the pages read. The return does not name its government grantors. Dreadnode’s release names no government partner. The gap is the one the layer already has: a company that builds the evaluations, and a government-linked investor in it, with no page saying what each tells the other.

Interest: IQT argues no AI policy position in its own pages; it has filed no comments on the pages read. What its documented practice implies, each beside a term in the record, not a claim about motive and not a verdict:

• Government should buy commercial AI and test it first. Position, IQT’s: “harnessing commercially available tech,” and IQT Labs’ audit practice. What it pays: IQT’s portfolio companies, among them Dreadnode, whose platform sells “cyber evaluations” to “government, enterprise, and AI labs.” Best case, IQT’s: lower cost to the taxpayer, “IQT often invests alongside venture capital firms.” Who else gains: the co-investors, Decibel among them.
• Offensive-AI capability measurement is a national-security input. Position, carried by the investee, not IQT: “there is no more important field in AI than understanding how attackers can leverage AI products for their own use and abuse,” said Decibel’s Jon Sakoda in Dreadnode’s release. What it pays: the evaluation tooling IQT’s stake sits beside. Best case, the release’s: “We can’t build great defensive solutions against AI-driven attacks without first pushing the boundaries of what AI models can do when used by advanced adversaries.” Who else gains: the labs and agencies that buy the measurements (Dreadnode, Series A).

Position in the Apparatus

• The evaluator layer it touches. Dreadnode is a company listed in the layer’s evaluator tables, with Decibel, Next Frontier Capital, Sands Capital, Indie VC and Aviso Ventures; no lab is among its named investors, and its release names “AI labs partners” without naming them. See The AI Evaluators and Evaluator Alliances.
• A neighbouring government investor. Halcyon Futures’s about page lists a partner as a “Former Cofounder and CEO Tether Therapeutics, and EIR at DARPA/In-Q-Tel focused on biosecurity”; Halcyon’s pages describe no IQT investment (Halcyon Futures, about).
• Beside the larger checkbooks. IQT’s $132 million in annual revenue is far above a seed incubator’s $611,455 in grants and well below a large philanthropic funder’s annual grants; see Good Ventures and Halcyon Futures.

Actions & Leadership Choices

CONDUCT: STRUCTURAL — A CIA-FOUNDED INVESTOR IN THE COMPANY THAT BUILDS THE EVALUATIONS, AND ITS OWN AI AUDIT LAB. No wrongdoing is alleged. The structural point is a chain in plain sight: an intelligence-community-funded investor takes a small stake and a board-observer seat in a company that sells model evaluations and AI red-team tools to labs, enterprises and governments, runs a lab that audits models itself, and files a return that names the government as the source of 86.5 percent of its revenue. The investor’s own best case is that it says all of this on its About page, that it states the investments are modest and co-invested, and that the investee names its government partners only in aggregate because they are customers.

The two roles at once. IQT describes itself as both an investor and, in its FAQ, a source of “technology development agreements” for the national-security community; the Dreadnode release names its participation and nothing about the form. Dreadnode’s release also says its platform was built with “trusted government, enterprise, and AI labs partners.” Whether these overlap is not stated on any page read.

A recused trustee transaction. Schedule L records $593,748 paid to a company on whose board a trustee sits and says the trustee is recused, the standard way a filing handles it.

Alliance Map

These run at the same time. A firm set up by the CIA is a not-for-profit with $880 million in net assets that reports 86.5 percent of its revenue as government grants, is listed as a participant in the round of one company that builds AI cyber evaluations beside four venture firms, and runs its own AI audit lab; no page says what the government customer asks of the investee. IQT and Dreadnode each disclose their side. The overlap is the finding.

Reach Assessment

Institutional: $132.1 million in annual revenue, $880 million in net assets, 800+ investments, 206 staff, partners across the intelligence and defense agencies and two allied intelligence communities; in AI evaluation, one named evaluator investment and an in-house audit lab. Memetic: A knowledge library, an IQT Labs blog and a portfolio page; no policy paper on AI regulation under its name on the pages read.

Civilizational: For scale, IQT’s net assets are $880,418,066 and its revenue is government grants, not donations; the philanthropic funders profiled here (Good Ventures, Schmidt Sciences) carry their own figures on their own returns. In the evaluator layer, IQT is a government-linked minority holder, not a funder of the field.

Score note. Attack 6, defense 8 and hp 8 on first-hand receipts: IQT’s About and portfolio pages, its return’s revenue, government-grant line, trustees and Schedules L, O and R, Dreadnode’s release and about page, and IQT Labs’ blog. Peers: Schmidt Sciences (6/8/7, hazard 70), a family foundation: level on reach and insulation, and a point higher on entrenchment for IQT, because it is twenty-five years old with $880,418,066 in net assets; RAND (8/9/9, hazard 80), the research corporation that shapes federal AI policy: two lower on reach, one lower on insulation and on entrenchment; Dreadnode (5/5/4, hazard 47), the company it holds a stake in: one above on reach, three above on insulation, four above on entrenchment. Hazard 73.3 sits just above Schmidt Sciences.

Score basis. Atk 6 is reach: 800+ investments, AI first among key focus areas, a named participant in Dreadnode’s Series A and an AI audit lab, with the amount of its stake unpublished and no gate (IQT, Portfolio; Dreadnode, Series A). Def 8 is insulation: $114,227,920 of $132,130,603 is government grants, nine of eleven trustees independent, no lab among funders; one recused related-party transaction (ProPublica, Form 990; ProPublica, Schedule L). Hp 8 is entrenchment: set up in 1999, exempt since April 2001, $880,418,066 in net assets, 206 employees, no statutory seat (ProPublica, In-Q-Tel Inc).

Sources: IQT, About; IQT, Our Team; IQT, Portfolio; IQT, Interrogating RoBERTa; Dreadnode, Series A; Dreadnode, About; ProPublica, In-Q-Tel Inc; ProPublica, Form 990 tax year to March 2025; ProPublica, Schedule B; ProPublica, Schedule L; ProPublica, Schedule O; ProPublica, Schedule R; SecurityWeek, Armadin; Halcyon Futures, about