Track A · Founding teams
Dual-Use Founder Program
10–12 dual-use founding teams a year from across New Mexico's defense corridors. We take teams from before incorporation through early revenue.
New Mexico builds the nation's deep tech. It's time it built the companies too.
Rio Bravo Lab is a nonprofit founder program and university certificate that builds national security founders across New Mexico's defense corridors, turning the state's concentration of research infrastructure into mission-driven companies that stay here. Every venture is dual-use: built for defense, useful far beyond it.
2
Defense corridors served: northern and southern New Mexico
10–12
Dual-use founding teams per annual cohort
$12.5K
From a needs-based pool: up to $10K cash + $2.5K travel per team
0%
Equity taken. Non-dilutive by design.
The gap
The infrastructure is here. The pipeline isn't.
New Mexico is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Kirtland Air Force Base, White Sands Missile Range, and Holloman Air Force Base: some of the most consequential dual-use infrastructure in the country.
"Sandia creates technologies. We don't create companies, so there's a gap."
"This is about translating world-class science into world-class jobs."
Every program that funds defense technology here asks for a company first. SBIR and STTR are awarded to registered businesses, and the accelerators that prepare companies for them recruit nationally. Little reaches the technologist before the company exists — and talent trained on national-security problems leaves for Austin, Boston, and the Bay.
That is where Rio Bravo Lab starts: identify founders early, put real mission problems in front of them, and fund the first hard year without taking a share of what they build.
Every founder or team that stays in New Mexico changes its story. Not "home of the labs." Home of the companies that the labs made possible. Home of the deep tech ecosystem. That's the difference between hosting federally funded deep tech laboratories and owning a deep tech economy: the potential to create a thriving workforce, a new tax base, second- and third-time founders, and the reason the next engineer trained here stops assuming she has to either join the federal workforce or leave to make a living and raise her family.
The core model
Two tracks. One curriculum.
Rio Bravo Lab teaches one thing: how defense technology becomes a company that gets it fielded. Two tracks deliver it to two populations, at different distances from a company existing.
What we teach
- Technology roadmapping. Quantitative, not narrative: the honest distance between a result on a lab bench and a fielded system, and whether the government is a customer or the whole market.
- Requirements translation. Finding the government buyer actually funded to solve your problem, and the contract vehicle they can use to reach you.
- Transition capital. The first non-dilutive dollar — the one we award before you incorporate — when to form the entity, and what to sequence after Phase II.
- Security and export posture. Controlled information, CMMC eligibility, ITAR registration and EAR classification, and the export exposure you inherit the day you leave — including your first technical hire.
- Product design and development. The design process itself, taught from Ulrich, Eppinger, and Yang — the standard text, used in Eppinger's own MIT Sloan course.
- Manufacturing readiness. Validated prototype to repeatable production: qualifying suppliers, and keeping headquarters and jobs in New Mexico while you do it.
- Leaving the lab. Separation, conflicts, license terms, and the personal arithmetic of the decision.
Sourced from practitioners across New Mexico's laboratories and support ecosystem, aimed at the gaps they name.
Track B · Students
Graduate Certificate in Defense Innovation
A 12-credit graduate certificate where engineering and business students and working professionals build alpha prototypes against real mission problems.
Why two tracks
A New Mexico defense company fails to exist at three separate moments. A student never encounters a real mission problem, so the idea never forms. A technologist has the technology and no way to test whether it is a company. A founding team has the company and no route to a government buyer. Track B addresses the first. Track A addresses the second and third. Both tracks teach from the same curriculum, each taking the modules its stage can use.
Geography
Both of New Mexico's defense corridors
Most state innovation programs serve one metro. Rio Bravo Lab is built to serve the whole state, because the mission assets are spread across it.
Northern Corridor Los Alamos · Albuquerque
Weapons science, microelectronics, computing, and the state's largest research workforce.
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Sandia National Laboratories
- Kirtland AFB
- Air Force Research Laboratory
- University of New Mexico
Southern Corridor Las Cruces · Alamogordo
Test and evaluation, directed energy, autonomy, and aerospace range access.
- New Mexico State University
- Physical Science Laboratory
- White Sands Missile Range
- Holloman AFB
- Spaceport America
Institutional relationships
Built with the institutions that hold the mission
Institutional engagements as of September 2026.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
In discussion · problem source
Sandia National Laboratories
In discussion · problem source
QLab @ Harvard Belfer Center
Network access · showcase placement
UNM Rainforest Innovations
Letter of support · technology commercialization
Arrowhead Center
In discussion · technology commercialization
Physical Science Laboratory
In discussion · applied research
University of New Mexico
Rio Bravo Lab and UNM Rainforest Innovations work together on technology access, referrals, and connections to academic and research units. UNM is the intended second host for the graduate certificate.
New Mexico State University
First campus to offer the graduate certificate, with a memorandum of understanding in development. Covers the Physical Science Laboratory.
Leadership
Founding board
Operators from the labs, the Guard, special forces, and the venture side of defense tech.
Dax Contreras
Founder, Rio Bravo Lab
Systems Engineering Manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory. MIT System Design & Management '26, NMSU '19.
Stephen Buchanan
Co-Founder & CEO, Bandelier Technologies
Harvard MBA '26. Green Beret, 5th Special Forces Group.
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Andrew Salas
Former Adjutant General of New Mexico
38 years with the New Mexico National Guard. M.S., Naval Postgraduate School.
Where we are
Current momentum
Status as of September 2026.
-
In progress
501(c)(3) formation underway Rio Bravo Lab is not yet a recognized tax-exempt organization and cannot currently accept tax-deductible contributions.
-
In progress
LANL and Sandia institutional partnerships Both national laboratories engaged as institutional partners and problem sources, with letters of commitment under development.
-
Active
QLab @ Harvard Belfer Center partnership National network access and Cambridge showcase placement for Track A cohorts.
-
Active
UNM Rainforest Innovations letter of support The technology transfer organization for the University of New Mexico has provided a signed letter of support for our NMEDD grant application.
-
In progress
NMEDD Entrepreneurship Programmatic Support grant application In preparation with the New Mexico Economic Development Department.
-
In progress
Graduate certificate in development, NMSU first Curriculum designed with MIT MIX. Courses enter university approval in Spring 2027; NMSU's first course runs Fall 2027, the second Spring 2028. UNM is the intended second host.
-
Committed
New Mexico stays the beneficiary All ventures must headquarter and hire in New Mexico, wherever they incorporate.
Get involved
Build the pipeline with us
We're talking with funders, laboratory and university partners, mission problem sponsors, DoD and IC operators willing to mentor, and founders who want to build from New Mexico.