BigBear.ai's Ask Sage Buyout: Can it Become a GenAI Powerhouse?

BigBear.ai Holdings, Inc. BBAI is taking a transformative leap with its planned $250 million acquisition of Ask Sage, a fast-growing generative AI platform purpose-built for defense and national security. The deal could redefine BigBear.ai’s position in the secure AI infrastructure market by combining its mission-focused expertise with Ask Sage’s agentic AI and multi-model orchestration capabilities.

Ask Sage already supports more than 100,000 users across 16,000 U.S. government teams, including the Defense Health Agency, U.S. Space Force and Office of the Secretary of Defense. The platform’s FedRAMP High accreditation and cloud-agnostic design enable it to deploy more than 150 frontier and open-source models securely across classified environments — a competitive edge that could help BigBear.ai capture accelerating federal AI spending.

The acquisition also provides a substantial cross-selling opportunity. BigBear.ai can integrate its ConductorOS and VeriScan solutions into Ask Sage’s ecosystem, expanding its footprint across defense, intelligence and travel security customers. Meanwhile, Ask Sage’s projected sixfold ARR growth to $25 million in 2025 underscores its commercial viability.

With $715 million in cash and investments and a robust $376 million backlog, BigBear.ai enters this integration from a position of strength. Execution risks remain, but the move signals a pivot toward platform-level AI leadership. If successfully integrated, Ask Sage could turn BigBear.ai into a leading generative AI enabler for secure, mission-critical operations — positioning it for accelerated growth through 2026 and beyond.

BBAI Battles Established Players in National Security AI

BigBear.ai operates in a rapidly intensifying defense and intelligence AI market, competing with diversified players like Leidos Holdings LDOS and Science Applications International Corp. SAIC. Both Leidos and SAIC have deep federal footprints and long-standing ties with the Department of Defense, giving them scale and stability that BigBear.ai is working to match through its Ask Sage acquisition.

Leidos continues to expand its AI-driven mission systems, data fusion, and cyber analytics capabilities, aligning with the Pentagon’s push for real-time decision intelligence — an area where BigBear.ai seeks to differentiate through agile agentic AI integration. Meanwhile, SAIC is enhancing its machine learning and digital engineering offerings, building secure AI pipelines for national security and space operations.

As Leidos and SAIC intensify investments in secure automation and cloud-edge interoperability, BigBear.ai’s Ask Sage integration could provide the speed and modularity needed to compete head-on with these larger incumbents.

BigBear.ai Share Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

In the year-to-date period, BigBear.ai shares have soared 36.2%, outperforming the Zacks Computers - IT Services industry, the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector and the S&P 500 Index.

BBAI Share Price Performance

In terms of its forward 12-month price-to-sales ratio, BBAI stock is trading at 20.01, up from the industry’s 16.97.

P/S (F12M)

Over the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for BBAI’s 2025 loss per share has remained unchanged at $1.10. The company reported the same in the year-ago period.
 

BBAI currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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