CRITICAL MATERIALSOPEN Program Seeks to Prove Technology Capability for Global Critical Materials Market Transparency
Transparency in critical materials markets is essential to ensuring readiness and to the national security of the United States. It’s also vital to protecting consumers and businesses from the economic costs that stem from supply chain disruptions. DARPA effort selects companies to develop technology for critical commodity pricing, supply, and demand forecasting.
Transparency in critical materials markets is essential to ensuring Department of Defense (DOD) readiness and to the national security of the United States. It’s also vital to protecting consumers and businesses from the economic costs that stem from supply chain disruptions. However, price, supply, and demand information for critical materials is opaque and often flawed, making it difficult for producers, consumers, and investors to know the economic value and future supply of critical materials.
The DARPA Open Price Exploration for National security (OPEN) research and development program aims to develop forecasting technology to enable the market to better understand component-based pricing information and supply and demand for a range of critical commodities such as base metals, rare earth metals, and other materials. The program is structured as a single-phase, 24-month effort which will consist of a base period with two options, and recently selected performers for its seven-month base period.
“Transparency is of paramount importance for OPEN – both in the overarching goal of bringing transparency to critical materials markets, and in the need for program performers to prioritize openness in their computations and solutions,” said Jonathan Doyle, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “The OPEN performers will apply their expertise in what drives critical materials markets. The technology they develop for accurate and unbiased price, supply, and demand predictions may enable better-informed decision-making by the U.S. government and investors, and boost resiliency in the face of supply chain upheaval.”
Under OPEN’s first Technical Area (TA-1), performers will focus on developing a prototype system for estimating critical material input costs. Through innovative approaches to inferring and aggregating input costs, they will estimate cost-based structural pricing for commodities. Performers on OPEN’s second Technical Area (TA-2) will work to develop a prototype system to forecast supply and demand functions for critical materials.
Contracts for TA-1 have been awarded to Exiger and S&P Global Commodity Insights. Contracts for TA-2 have been awarded to Charles River Analytics, GE Research, and S&P Global Commodity Insights.
