Craft.co Expands Foreign Influence Detection and Insights with Patent Intelligence from BlueFoot


SAN FRANCISCO, July 17, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Craft.co (www.craft.co), the supply chain resilience company, today announced a strategic partnership with BlueFoot Inc. (www.bluefoot.ai), a market intelligence platform that empowers technology-based due diligence. This collaboration introduces BlueFoot’s proprietary FITT (Foreign Influence in Technology Transfer) Risk analysis into Craft’s robust supply chain resilience platform, setting a new standard in risk identification and mitigation during due diligence.

Exposing foreign influence threats is crucial to protecting the U.S. competitive edge in high-tech innovation and safeguarding strategic technological advancements. The expanded visibility provided in Craft’s platform supports compliance with the SBIR/STTR Extension Act requiring extensive due diligence to maintain federal support for innovative research and development.

"Craft is dedicated to safeguarding U.S. technological advancements and enhancing the resilience of global supply chains," said Brian Mackerer, Group Director - Government and Defense Sector at Craft. "The addition of critical IP intelligence into our platform enhances our ability to provide clients with actionable insights into the complexities of foreign technology transfer and intellectual property security. This enables them to make informed decisions regarding investments, partnerships, and compliance with regulatory requirements.”

BlueFoot’s FITT data identifies potential threat actors from adversarial nations that may be involved in the improper transfer or theft of intellectual property. BlueFoot enables this identification by putting patents into business context – specifically by identifying global corporate ownership across 150M global patents and 15M companies – and by enabling technology categorization of patents.

"We are excited to integrate our FITT capabilities into Craft’s supply chain resilience platform, to enable government agencies and businesses to elevate their due diligence processes," said Ramya Possett, Co-Founder and CEO at BlueFoot. "Our capability leverages proprietary data science and AI to perform nuanced patent analysis and financial assessments, designed to give businesses and government agencies a critical edge in safeguarding against complex international technology challenges."

The integration of patent intelligence into Craft's data fabric and risk mitigation engine boosts the platform's ability to give clients 360-degree visibility into supplier networks. Known for its AI-driven insights, disruption detection, and collaborative tools, Craft's platform now has enhanced features to assess all risks: financial, compliance, cybersecurity, ESG, and geopolitical, including those tied to foreign technology transfer and intellectual property security.

Today's news follows Craft.co's recent announcement of its five-year, $28 million contract with Secretary of the Air Force for supplier risk and intelligence technology.

About Craft
Craft illuminates the path to global supply chain resilience. It empowers businesses to strengthen their supplier networks and supply chains with the industry's most reliable and comprehensive data fabric and advanced risk mitigation engine. Craft's user-friendly platform offers 360-degree visibility to explore and evaluate supplier networks, AI-driven insights to detect and mitigate disruptions, and collaborative tools to enhance supply chain strategies. Procurement and supply chain professionals can confidently navigate regulatory environments, adhere to ethical standards, and ensure business continuity. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Craft assists commercial and governmental organizations worldwide in creating more resilient supply chains. For more information about Craft, visit www.craft.co.

About BlueFoot­­
BlueFoot’s technology-based search platform empowers corporate due diligence in the rapidly evolving tech market. With its proprietary data science and AI, BlueFoot automatically correlates patent, financial, and market data to instantly create a global market map of companies in a bespoke tech area. BlueFoot enables the benchmarking of companies’ relative tech strengths in that bespoke tech area as well. BlueFoot also uncovers FITT (Foreign Influence in Technology Transfer) Risk to identify threat actors (both companies and persons) that transfer patents and technologies to entities in adversarial nations. Used by the financial sector, corporate IP departments, and the government, BlueFoot is a must-have software tool for automated corporate due diligence. For more information, visit www.bluefoot.ai.

Media Contact: press@craft.co