DAYTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 13, 2026--
A surge in data from the internet and AI is driving demand to move more of it in space. While computing power continues to advance, the ability to move data between satellites has become a critical bottleneck. This is expected to grow as industry giants consider building data centers in space.
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Ravee today announced an oversubscribed $6 million funding round led by BIG Capital, a Vietnam-based investment firm with several successful space tech investments in its portfolio, along with co-investment from JobsOhio Ventures and Cincinnati-based CincyTech. The financing follows Ravee’s graduation from the Seraphim Space Accelerator last year.
Leveraging decades of experience with optical technology, including time with the Air Force Research Lab in Dayton, Ohio, co-founders Piyush Shah and Augustine Urbas formed Ravee Optics to apply next-generation optical technology to rapidly growing defense and commercial markets.
“We are building ultra-compact optical communications terminals to serve the growing demand for on-orbit data transport,” said Shah. “We built our technology to address this challenge at scale with revolutionary optics technology and design for manufacturing to enable wider deployment of optical communications across the future space ecosystem.”
The company’s initial focus is addressing the limitations of current satellite communication technology by building optical communication systems designed for scale. Its hardware is smaller, lighter, and easier to produce in large volumes, making it possible to deploy more systems across growing satellite networks.
The company’s systems use lasers to transmit data between satellites, enabling faster communication than traditional approaches. By redesigning how these systems are built, Ravee can deliver significantly more data—up to 10 to 100 times greater than current standards—using smaller, lighter hardware to transport that data.
Ravee has generated early revenue through testing programs and has demonstrated the core optics technology through a U.S. Air Force program. The company is working with government and commercial partners as it moves toward eventual deployment across satellite networks.
“What stands out about Ravee is their focus on building smaller and lighter systems that can be produced and deployed at scale—across large and growing satellite networks,” said Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson (retired) who was Commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base and advisor to Ravee and board member.
“AI is driving a surge in data in space, and the systems to move that data haven’t kept up,” said Emma Off, CEO of CincyTech. “Ravee is focused on solving that bottleneck with an approach built for scale. This investment marks our entry into the space economy and reflects our focus on backing companies solving real problems in growing markets.”
Alexander Holt, Managing Director of Seraphim Space Enterprise said: “We are delighted with the progress that Ravee Optics has made since graduating from the Seraphim Space Accelerator in 2025. Gaining early commercial revenues, and playing into the needs of defense markets and a strong investor base point to a very promising trajectory for the team.”
“As our nation continues its pursuit to advance technology and communication in space, Ohio innovators have a unique advantage to develop both military and commercial partnerships that can move these innovations forward,” said JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef. “Ravee is leveraging these exceptional resources, including the AFRL, to pioneer new ways to more rapidly move data and messaging via satellite and strengthen our national defense.”
The investment will support Ravee’s continued engineering and product development as it works toward testing in space and broader deployments across satellite networks.
About Ravee Optics
Ravee Optics is a Dayton, Ohio–based company developing laser communication systems designed to move large volumes of data across satellite networks. Its technology enables faster data movement using smaller, lighter hardware built for scale. Learn more at raveeoptics.com.
About BIG Capital
BIG Capital is a Vietnam-based investment firm with several successful space tech investments in its portfolio.
About CincyTech
CincyTech is a leading early-stage venture capital firm dedicated to transforming visionary ideas into world-class companies. They partner with founders to solve the world’s most complex challenges. Through seed and early-stage investment, hands-on management assistance, and capital formation support, CincyTech fosters a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ohio. CincyTech’s investment in Ravee Optics leverages matching funds from Ohio’s State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) program. Learn more about CincyTech at cincytechusa.com.
About JobsOhio Ventures
JobsOhio Ventures is a subsidiary of JobsOhio, Ohio’s private nonprofit economic development corporation committed to helping businesses and their people thrive. JobsOhio Ventures serves as the preferred strategic partner for early-stage innovators in healthcare and transformational tech. As an evergreen co-investment fund, we provide frictionless capital to growing companies, as well as unparalleled access to the Ohio tech ecosystem to create and accelerate scale.
Augustine Urbas, Co-founder
Ravee Optics Helps Solve Growing Data Bottleneck in Space; Poised to Support Orbital Data Centers
MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 13, 2026--
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), an ROI-led AI transformation firm, today announced AI World Class Procurement benchmarks – new research that quantifies how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping procurement performance and reveals a growing gap between organizations redesigning source-to-pay around AI and those that simply automate existing procurement activities.
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These new benchmarks build on The Hackett Group’s AI World Class research introduced in May, which identified performance advantages of up to 75% for organizations pursuing process-led AI transformation. The new procurement benchmarks show how those advantages emerge across critical procurement processes and where organizations can create measurable improvements in procurement return on investment (ROI), savings generation, supplier performance, and business value.
The research indicates that the next phase of AI adoption will be defined less by technology deployment and more by the business value procurement creates. As organizations face continued pressure to improve margins and strengthen supply resilience, chief procurement officers are increasingly expected to accelerate savings, strengthen supplier performance, improve compliance and reduce enterprise risk with leaner teams.
“Most organizations are still trying to justify AI investments one use case at a time,” said Tim Yoo, principal and Procurement Transformation practice leader at The Hackett Group ®. “Our research shows the greatest returns come when organizations redesign procurement processes with AI as a key enabler, allowing better decisions to build value throughout the end-to-end process.”
The new benchmarks span critical procurement processes, including sourcing, supplier management, purchasing, purchase-to-pay and supplier performance. AI World Class Procurement benchmarks quantify where process-led AI transformation can create the greatest value and establish future-state performance standards across the procurement function.
Purchase-to-pay demonstrates how AI creates compounding value. Better supplier intelligence, sourcing decisions, and increasingly autonomous transaction processing reinforce one another throughout the procurement process to increase savings, supplier performance, compliance and ROI.
The performance impact is significant. AI World Class organizations generate up to 3.7X greater procurement ROI and 3X greater savings impact. AI World Class modeling also shows purchase-to-pay process costs can decline by up to 80%, while staffing requirements can decrease by up to 81%, creating capacity for supplier strategy, sourcing optimization and higher-value commercial decision-making.
Competitive bidding increases by 97% alongside 42% greater supplier concentration, improving sourcing outcomes before a purchase order is ever created. Guided buying and catalog adoption improved by 110%, reducing maverick spend leakage by 69%. As purchasing quality improves, invoice errors decline by 76%, invoice processing accelerates by 74% and transaction execution becomes increasingly autonomous.
The impact becomes even more visible as procurement organizations redirect capacity from administration to supplier strategy. Increasingly autonomous execution frees procurement professionals to spend more time strengthening supplier relationships, optimizing sourcing strategies and pursuing commercial opportunities with the greatest potential.
“Procurement creates the greatest value before an order is placed,” said Jeff Gilkerson, principal at The Hackett Group ®. “AI gives procurement teams the capacity to spend less time administering transactions and more time making better supplier and commercial decisions that strengthen enterprise performance.”
While purchase-to-pay provides a clear illustration of the opportunity, similar patterns emerge across the broader AI World Class benchmark portfolio. The benchmarks span 16 end-to-end enterprise processes and identify where process reinvention can unlock the greatest gains in cost, productivity, speed and business performance. The most significant value is created when organizations redesign how work flows across an entire process enabled by AI rather than focusing on isolated automation opportunities.
The AI World Class benchmarks are grounded in more than 30 years of benchmark data, process intelligence and transformation experience drawn from leading global organizations, including 98% of the Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100.
The AI World Class Procurement benchmarks are available exclusively through The Hackett Group ®. Download the AI World Class Procurement report to learn how process-led AI transformation is creating a growing procurement performance gap and where organizations can capture the greatest procurement value.
About The Hackett Group®
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is an ROI-led, AI enterprise transformation firm that helps clients enable AI world-class performance. Its experts and engineers leverage proprietary AI delivery platforms – Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™ and AskHackett™ – to accelerate and enhance the delivery of the company’s solutions and services.
The AI platforms are powered by the company’s domain-specific Hackett Solution Language Model informed by Hackett Process and Performance Intelligence – including Digital World Class ® benchmark metrics, best-practice process flows and service delivery model solution frameworks, which accelerate and enhance the delivery of its services. The Hackett Group’s proprietary insights are based on benchmarking results from leading global organizations, including 98% of Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100. Visit www.thehackettgroup.com
Trademarks
The Hackett Group ®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class ® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group ®.
Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward-Looking” Statements
This release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability of The Hackett Group ® to effectively market its digital transformation services, our ability to transition our capabilities to support generative artificial intelligence (AI)-related consulting services and solutions and other consulting services, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions into our operations, our ability to manage joint ventures and successfully cooperate with our joint venture partners, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group ® and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group ® does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.
Purchase-to-pay provides one of the clearest examples of how AI creates enterprise value within procurement. Improvements in supplier intelligence, sourcing effectiveness, purchasing efficiency and transaction processing reinforce one another. Better decisions upstream reduce work downstream, improving supplier performance and strengthening procurement ROI throughout the process. While many organizations focus on automating individual procurement activities, AI World Class reveals a larger opportunity: redesigning the end-to-end purchase-to-pay process around AI. AI World Class modeling shows purchase-to-pay process costs can decline by up to 80%, while staffing requirements per billion dollars of spend can decline by up to 81%. This creates the opportunity to shift procurement capacity toward supplier strategy, sourcing optimization and commercial decision-making.
