What the Commercial Solutions Opening actually is
A Commercial Solutions Opening is not a request for proposals and not a broad agency announcement. It is a standing competitive solicitation document, published once and left open, that sets the procedures governing every individual opportunity posted underneath it. The Defense Innovation Unit describes its CSO as its method for employing the prototyping authority now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 4022, and the document is explicit about what comes out the other end: awards will be made using other transaction agreements, negotiated and signed by an agreements officer.
That settles most of the questions people bring to this process. There is no FAR contract at the end, no standard clause set, no DFARS data rights defaults. What exists instead is an agreement whose terms two parties write, inside a competitive process whose rules the CSO fixes in advance.
The authority line is unusual and worth reading closely. Section 4022 lists the officials who may carry out prototype projects under it, and the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit is named in the statute alongside the Director of DARPA and the service secretaries. Congress wrote the office into the statute.
One artifact of history is worth knowing before you open the document. The published CSO cites 10 U.S.C. § 2371b for the prototype authority and § 2302(9) for the definition of a nontraditional defense contractor. Both were renumbered when the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act reorganized Title 10: the authority is now § 4022 and the nontraditional definition is now § 3014. The text did not change with the renumbering. Cite the current sections in your own paperwork; expect the old ones in DIU's.
The Area of Interest is deliberately underspecified
Individual opportunities are posted as Areas of Interest, or AOIs, and they behave nothing like a requirements document. The CSO says so directly: an AOI is a broader problem statement than a traditional government solicitation, written that way to maximize latitude in creativity and to allow participation from commercial vendors unfamiliar with government solicitations.
For anyone trained on FAR-based bidding, this inverts the usual reading discipline. There is no shall-statement list to trace, no compliance matrix to build, no section L to obey line by line. A response that reads as an exhaustive point-by-point rebuttal of a short problem statement has usually missed what the document is asking for.
AOIs may be posted at any time, with no annual cycle to plan against. DIU publishes an RSS feed for new postings. Submissions go through the DIU site electronically, and the CSO is blunt about the consequence of any other route: submissions sent through other channels, or after the AOI period has ended, will not be reviewed and will not be evaluated.
One more line in the evaluation section changes how a company should write. The CSO states that while it is not overtly stated in AOIs, the government's evaluation will consider whether a submission increases the likelihood of accomplishing DIU's three stated mission aspects: accelerating adoption of advanced commercial technology, transforming department capabilities, and strengthening the national security innovation base. That is a published evaluation consideration that will not appear in the opportunity you are answering.
Three phases, and what each one is testing
The CSO defines a three-phase competitive procedure. Companies describe it as a funnel, which is accurate in shape but misleading about mechanics: the three phases do not evaluate the same thing at increasing depth. They evaluate different things.
The published sequence and what each stage decides
DIU publishes a target of awarding prototype agreements in as few as 60 to 90 days, and that figure has done more to shape expectations of this office than any other number attached to it. Treat it as a best case rather than a planning assumption. The CSO's own text supplies the counterweight: a pitch remains valid for 180 calendar days after the pitch date, and a company may be told its solution is of interest but not eligible to proceed because government resources are not available. If 60 to 90 days were typical, a six-month validity window would not need to exist.
Phase 1: the solution brief
The brief is short by design. DIU strongly recommends that it not exceed five written pages in 12-point font, or fifteen briefing slides as an alternative format. A title page does not count against the limit. These are recommendations rather than hard requirements, which is precisely why exceeding them signals something about the company rather than about the technology.
The recommended content is four items: a title page with company name, point of contact, and explicit identification of the AOI being answered; a one-page executive summary; a technology concept section describing what is unique about the approach as it relates to the AOI; and a company viability section.
The technology concept section carries an instruction that decides a great many outcomes. It asks the company to identify whether the effort is a pilot or demonstration of existing commercial technology, described as commercially ready and viable, or the development of technology for potential defense application. If development or adaptation is proposed, the brief must identify a suggested path to mature the technology. Answering that honestly is more useful than answering it ambitiously. DIU's stated business is adoption of commercial technology, and a brief that quietly proposes a research project inside the vocabulary of a product is the most common way a technically strong company loses this stage.
Three criteria govern the Phase 1 evaluation: relevance of the brief in addressing the AOI; whether the approach or underlying technology is unique, underutilized, or innovative for government application and is a compelling solution to the stated problem; and technical merit and feasibility. Individual AOIs may add criteria, posted in the AOI itself.
How company postures line up against the three Phase 1 criteria
Editorial weighting of how each posture reads against the three published Phase 1 criteria. Illustrative rather than measured; DIU publishes no scoring scale.
The bars rank postures, not companies. A posture near the top satisfies all three published criteria at once without the brief having to argue for it: the technology exists, someone outside the government already relies on it, and the adaptation needed for defense use is bounded and described. Postures near the bottom fail the second criterion regardless of engineering quality, because a capability the department already owns is neither underutilized nor innovative for government application.
Why company viability sits inside a technical evaluation
The Phase 1 brief asks for a company overview, a summary of fundraising to date or of top-line revenue, and a summary of product commercialization and go-to-market strategy. Companies trained on research proposals routinely treat this as boilerplate and lose ground on it.
The reason it is there follows from what DIU is for. A prototype that succeeds is supposed to transition, and a transition depends on the company still existing, still selling the product, and still able to support it at scale two years later. A brief that establishes deep technical merit and says nothing credible about revenue, customers, or funding has answered one of the three criteria and left a gap in the one the evaluators use to judge whether the answer will still be available when it is needed.
Several general guidelines shape the writing more than they first appear to. Elaborate brochures are explicitly not desired. Diagrams depicting the essence of the solution are strongly encouraged. A company may submit multiple briefs against one AOI when each is a separate and distinct concept. Period of performance should generally be no greater than 24 months, and everything submitted must be unclassified.
The restrictive-legend provision deserves a read rather than a copy-paste. The CSO supplies exact cover-page language for data that should not be disclosed outside the government except for evaluation, and requires each restricted sheet to carry a matching marking. Applying the legend to a whole document is weaker than applying it to the sheets carrying the proprietary content, because the legend itself asks you to identify those sheets.
Phase 2: the pitch and the seven factors
Companies whose briefs are evaluated to be of merit may be invited to pitch, in person or virtually. The word "may" is load-bearing, and the CSO removes any ambiguity about it: DIU routinely receives more solution briefs than it has the resources to award, the government reserves the right to limit the number of companies invited, and a solution may be evaluated to be of merit and still not be invited. Merit is necessary. It is not sufficient.
Two new items must be addressed at the pitch that were absent from Phase 1: a rough order of magnitude price with a notional schedule for how the concept could be prototyped inside the department, and data rights assertions identifying the intellectual property involved and any restrictions on the government's use of it. The government may also use external market research during the pitch to evaluate company viability, so the viability claims made in Phase 1 get checked against outside sources rather than accepted.
The pitch is evaluated against seven factors: relevance to the AOI; technical merit, adequacy against the government need, and feasibility; company viability; whether the approach is unique, underutilized, or innovative and compelling; the rough order of magnitude; whether the notional schedule is acceptable; and the potential impact of the data rights assertions.
Data rights sitting as a standalone factor is the item most often underestimated. It is not a compliance checkbox at this stage; it is scored. A company asserting broad restrictions across everything it will touch is telling the evaluators the agreement will be hard to negotiate and the transition path may be constrained. The stronger position is specific: named background components carrying restrictions, and a clearly identified layer where the government gets the rights it needs to operate and integrate what it paid for.
Like Phase 1, pitches are evaluated on the merit of the concept in addressing the AOI rather than against other pitches under the same AOI. There is no comparative ranking to argue your way up.
The three outcomes, including the one nobody plans for
After the pitch evaluation, the government notifies the company of one of three results: the concept is selected for possible award of a prototype other transaction and a full proposal is invited; the concept is not of interest; or the concept is of interest but is not eligible for a proposal because of the availability of government resources.
That third outcome surprises people, and it has a clock attached. A company in that position may be asked to respond to a request for prototype proposal within 180 calendar days from the pitch date. If government resources are not identified inside that window, or earlier if DIU says so, the company is no longer eligible for award under that AOI. Pitch submissions are valid for those 180 days and no longer.
So a strong technical outcome can expire because money did not appear. A company sitting in that window is not waiting on an evaluation. It is waiting on a funding line, and the useful work during that period is with the military customer who wants the capability rather than with evaluators who already agreed it has merit.
Phase 3: the request for prototype proposal
The final phase produces a full written proposal in two sections. Section 1 is technical: background and objectives, approach, deliverables, resources, anticipated results, and ancillary issues such as certifications, algorithms, and software development methodology. It must include a statement of work identifying the work and the deliverables, and a detailed project schedule covering the phases of work inside the proposed period of performance. It may refer back to the solution brief that prompted the request, but must not duplicate it. A separate section identifies any government support the company needs, such as facilities, equipment, data, or information. Section 2 is price: a total price to complete the prototype project, plus whatever supporting information is necessary to determine a fair and reasonable price, which can include a commercial price catalog or other proprietary information.
The negotiation posture is genuinely different from a FAR competition, and the CSO states it plainly: companies may propose their own internal terms and conditions, such as service or user license agreements, for consideration during negotiations. Some terms the government cannot accept. Within that limit, projects awarded this way are described as flexible enough to adopt customary industry standards where legal and where they meet the government's needs. A commercial software company arriving with its standard license and support terms is doing what the document anticipates.
Five statutory tests run against the price proposal. They do not have to be addressed in the proposal itself, with the exception of a cost-share arrangement if one applies, but the government reviews the proposal to confirm each.
It fits the definition of a prototype. The definition is wide: proof of concept, model, pilot, novel application of commercial technology for defense purposes, agile development activity, demonstration of technical or operational utility, or a combination. A prototype may be physical, virtual, or conceptual, and a process, including a business process, can be the subject of one.
Quantity is limited to what is needed to prove technical or manufacturing feasibility or evaluate military utility. A prototype agreement is not a procurement of an operational quantity.
It meets the mission effectiveness standard, meaning the work is directly relevant to enhancing department mission effectiveness.
Nontraditional participation or cost share is satisfied. Either a nontraditional defense contractor contributes to a significant extent, or the one-third non-federal cost share is addressed. The nontraditional test is CAS coverage, not company size, and it sweeps in all small business concerns by definition.
Defense utility is present, meaning the solution applies to a department platform, system, or component.
Award mechanics
Only an agreements officer may enter into or modify a binding agreement on behalf of the government. Nothing said by a program manager, a portfolio director, or a non-government advisor during evaluation creates an obligation.
Registration in the System for Award Management is required to receive an award, and the CSO advises starting it on receipt of a request for prototype proposal rather than after selection. The document also refers to a Dun & Bradstreet number; federal award systems have since moved to the Unique Entity ID assigned through SAM.gov, and that is what a company will actually receive. Registration in the prescribed government invoicing system is also required, and the company must be determined responsible and not suspended or debarred. Receiving a request for prototype proposal does not guarantee an award; the government may cancel it at any point before signature.
Two provisions attach at specific thresholds. Where an agreement provides for payments totaling more than $5,000,000, it must include a clause giving the Comptroller General discretionary access to examine the records of any party to the agreement or any entity participating in performance — a threshold that sits in the statute at § 4022(c) as well as in the CSO. And under § 4022(h), an agreement under this authority is treated as a federal agency procurement for purposes of chapter 21 of title 41, so the Procurement Integrity Act applies to the competition and the award in full.
Iterative prototyping and the transition provision
Two sections near the end of the CSO carry more strategic weight than their length suggests. The first allows an iterative prototyping process: by mutual agreement, the government may modify the work in a prototype project to adapt the technology to additional discrete purposes and mission sets. Those additional mission sets may come from the original government customer, or they may originate with other organizations elsewhere in the federal government. A single agreement can grow to cover users who were not in the room when it was signed.
The follow-on provision is the reason companies pursue this pathway at all. On successful completion of a prototype project, the government and the company may negotiate a follow-on production contract or agreement without further competition, under § 4022(f). The CSO commits that AOIs and prototype agreements awarded under it will include language providing for that potential award, and will explicitly identify follow-on production as a possible outcome of a successful effort.
"Successful completion" is a written determination, and it can happen early
A prototype project is complete upon the written determination of the program manager and agreements officer that the effort met the key technical goals of the project, satisfied success metrics incorporated into the agreement, or accomplished a particularly favorable or unexpected result justifying transition to production. Successful completion can also occur before the project concludes, letting the government transition the part that works while other parts are still running. Every prototype agreement must contain a provision setting out the conditions for successful completion. Those conditions are negotiated in Phase 3, and they are what a non-competitive production award later turns on.
Read that twice before a Phase 3 negotiation. The success metrics written into the agreement are the criteria a written determination will later be made against, and that determination is what unlocks a production award with no competition in front of it. Measurable metrics — a stated accuracy at a stated operating point, a latency budget under a defined load, a completed integration against a named system — protect both parties. Language about general satisfaction leaves the call to whoever holds the role at the end.
How this compares with the alternatives
Two other pathways are frequently confused with this one, and the differences are not cosmetic.
| Axis | DIU CSO → prototype OT (10 U.S.C. 4022) | FAR-based CSO (10 U.S.C. 3458) | Traditional FAR Part 15 competition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instrument awarded | Other transaction agreement, signed by an agreements officer | Procurement contract, required by statute to be fixed-price, including fixed-price incentive | Procurement contract of any permitted type |
| What you submit first | Five-page brief or fifteen slides against a broad problem statement | Response to a general solicitation, evaluated by peer, technical, or operational review | Full proposal against sections L and M |
| Comparative ranking | None; evaluated on merit against the AOI, not against other submissions | Competitive selection of proposals from a general solicitation | Trade-off or lowest price technically acceptable, offerors compared directly |
| Terms and conditions | Negotiated; the company may propose its own commercial terms | FAR and DFARS clause set applies | FAR and DFARS clause set applies |
| Congressional notice | Triggered at higher award thresholds under the statute | Required within 45 days for contracts exceeding $100,000,000 | Not an ordinary feature of the award |
| Path to production | Non-competitive follow-on under § 4022(f) after a written determination of successful completion | Sole-source follow-on production permitted, subject to approval requirements | Recompete, or exercise priced options |
The third row matters most for a commercial company. The absence of comparative ranking changes what a submission is for: there is no field of competitors to beat on a scorecard and no evaluation narrative to win on relative strength. A brief has to clear a bar on its own terms, then survive a resource decision that has nothing to do with the quality of anyone else's submission.
What this process does not give you
An honest reading has to include the parts that are absent.
There is no debriefing right. The CSO provides for written notice of selection to pitch and for notification of the pitch outcome. It does not create an entitlement to evaluation narrative, scores, or reviewer commentary. Feedback, where it comes, is a courtesy.
Non-government advisors may participate in evaluation of briefs and pitches and during proposal development and negotiation. They sign non-disclosure agreements with the government, and submitting under the CSO constitutes a grant of authority to use them. DIU states that support contractors in this role are barred from performing DIU-sponsored technical research. A company with sharp concerns about who reads its proprietary material can enter into its own NDAs directly with those advisors rather than assume the government's are enough.
Submissions are not returned. The original copy of each is retained and other non-required copies destroyed, and a certification of destruction may be requested only if a formal request reaches the office within five calendar days after notification of non-selection. Five days is short, and the clock starts on a notice nobody is happy to receive.
DIU commits to protecting submitted information under the Trade Secrets Act, the Economic Espionage Act, the FOIA exemption for confidential commercial information at 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4), and Executive Order 12600. Those are real protections, and not a substitute for marking the sheets that carry your proprietary content.
Practical notes before you write
Foreign-owned businesses may submit independently or as part of a teaming arrangement with United States-owned businesses, with the operative caveat that obtaining an agreement may depend on the ability to obtain the clearances and approvals needed to access proscribed information. Technical data with military application may require export approval, authorization, or license.
Expect DIU's current terminology and organization to differ from older write-ups. The department's public materials now use "Department of War," and DIU currently groups its work under four portfolio lines rather than the longer list of earlier years. Portfolio structure moves. The CSO procedures described here have been stable.
Common objections, answered plainly
Is this a faster route than SBIR for a company with a working product?
It is a different route rather than a faster version of the same one. SBIR funds a company to build and prove a capability and carries statutory data rights with it. This process assumes the capability already exists commercially and asks whether it can be adapted to a defense problem a customer already has. A company still in the "we could build this" stage is answering the wrong question here.
Does a strong solution brief get you a pitch?
Not by itself. The CSO states that DIU routinely receives more briefs than it has resources to award, that it reserves the right to limit the number of companies invited, and that a solution may be evaluated to be of merit without being invited to pitch. Merit is the entry condition, not the deciding one.
Can you protest a decision made in this process?
The award is an other transaction rather than a procurement contract, which is what removes most of the ordinary protest surface. The Procurement Integrity Act does apply by statute, so the ethical standards governing the competition are enforceable. Plan the process as one with very limited recourse if it goes against you.
Do you need a defense customer lined up before submitting?
Nothing in the CSO requires one. The structure rewards one anyway. AOIs originate from department problems, the third pitch outcome turns on whether government resources are available, and follow-on production runs through a customer who wants the capability fielded. A funded sponsor changes the odds at each point.
Bottom line
The process is legible, and that is its main advantage over the reputation it has acquired. A short brief tests whether a commercial technology is relevant, distinctive, and feasible for a stated defense problem. A pitch tests price, schedule, data rights, and whether the company is durable enough to still be there at transition. A full proposal negotiates the agreement, including the definition of success that a later production award will turn on. An agreements officer signs.
The failure modes are equally specific. A research project dressed as a product loses on the second criterion. A brief that skips commercial traction leaves a scored gap. Sweeping data rights assertions cost points before anyone reaches a negotiation. And a technically successful pitch can still expire in the 180-day window when no funding line appears, which is a customer problem rather than a proposal problem and has to be worked as one.
Frequently asked questions
DIU strongly recommends no more than five written pages in 12-point font, or fifteen briefing slides if you use the slide format. A title page does not count against the limit. These are recommendations rather than requirements, which is exactly why going long reads as a signal about the company.
An individual opportunity posted under the standing Commercial Solutions Opening. AOIs are written more broadly than standard government solicitations so that companies can propose approaches the government did not contemplate. They may be posted at any time, and DIU publishes an RSS feed for new postings.
Awards under this CSO are made as other transaction agreements for prototype projects under 10 U.S.C. § 4022, negotiated and executed by an agreements officer. That is a separate authority from the FAR-based commercial solutions opening at 10 U.S.C. § 3458, which produces fixed-price procurement contracts.
180 calendar days from the pitch date. A company told its solution is of interest but not eligible to proceed for lack of government resources may be asked to respond to a request for prototype proposal inside that window. After it closes, or earlier if DIU says so, the company is no longer eligible for award under that AOI.
Successfully complete the prototype project. That is a written determination by the program manager and agreements officer that the effort met the key technical goals, satisfied the success metrics written into the agreement, or produced a result favorable enough to justify transition. Negotiating measurable success metrics in Phase 3 is what makes that determination straightforward later.