Abe Usher
About
I’m co-founder and Co-CEO of Black Cape, which engineers trustworthy AI systems that give US defense and intelligence teams a decisive edge. I founded the company with Al Di Leonardo and Brian Poe, and it has locations in Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, and Texas.
I’m an engineer first. I created timehash, an open-source algorithm for binning time at any precision, while working on space-time analysis that had to be scalable and fast. That work led to two US patents on geospatial correlation, on which I am first-named inventor. My current focus is new methods of space-time analysis and methods of automating semantic pattern analysis in large collections of text.
Career
- Black Cape. I co-founded the company and serve as Co-CEO and Lead Engineer, architecting, designing, and developing machine learning capabilities.
- DigitalGlobe and Radiant Solutions. I served as Chief Technology Officer of DigitalGlobe Intelligence Solutions and as a Vice President of Radiant Solutions, a Maxar division, providing technical leadership to a 650-person business unit.
- The Radiant Group. As Chief Technology Officer, I oversaw technical integration across five business units and helped grow annual revenue past $100 million. DigitalGlobe acquired the company for $140 million.
- HumanGeo. I co-founded the company and served as Chief Technology Officer. HumanGeo grew from a start-up to $24 million in annual revenue before The Radiant Group acquired it. I built an engineering team that developed and deployed four analytic tools in four months for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Analytic Modernization initiative.
- Google. I was a senior engineer in Google Enterprise, working on search and geospatial technology including Google Earth and Google Maps.
Education and service
- B.S. in German and Arabic, United States Military Academy at West Point, 1996.
- M.S. in Information Systems, George Mason University, 2003.
I graduated from West Point in 1996 and served as a US Army infantry officer. I later served in the US Air Force as a cryptologist at the National Security Agency, and went on to support Special Operations teams in the Middle East and Europe.
Recognition
- FCW Federal 100, 2015 — for building an engineering team that delivered four analytic tools in four months.
- Military Operations Research Society David Rist Prize, 2016 — shared for the study “Data Science for Threat Finance Intelligence.”
How I lead
Lead by example.
Like land navigation: understand where you are—point A—where you are going—point B—and the best route from A to B.
Give teammates Purpose, Motivation, and Direction so they can operate independently.
Memberships
I’m a member of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation and the Global SOF Foundation.
Bios for event programs and press
Short bio — 47 words
Abe Usher is co-founder and Co-CEO of Black Cape, which engineers trustworthy AI systems that give US defense and intelligence teams a decisive edge. A West Point graduate and former Google engineer, he created the open-source timehash algorithm and holds two US patents in space-time data correlation.
Medium bio — 132 words
Abe Usher is co-founder and Co-CEO of Black Cape, which engineers trustworthy AI systems that give US defense and intelligence teams a decisive edge. He remains a working engineer: he created timehash, an open-source algorithm for analyzing time at any precision, and is first-named inventor on two US patents that extend the idea to space and time together.
Before Black Cape, he co-founded HumanGeo and served as its CTO, then as CTO of The Radiant Group and of DigitalGlobe Intelligence Solutions. Earlier he was a senior engineer in Google Enterprise. He was named to the FCW Federal 100 in 2015 and shared the 2016 MORS David Rist Prize.
A West Point graduate, he served as a US Army infantry officer and as a US Air Force cryptologist at the National Security Agency.
Long bio — 321 words
Abe Usher is co-founder and Co-CEO of Black Cape, which engineers trustworthy AI systems that give US defense and intelligence teams a decisive edge. He founded the company with Al Di Leonardo and Brian Poe, and it now has locations in Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, and Texas.
Abe is an engineer first. He created timehash, an open-source algorithm for binning time at any precision, while working on space-time analysis that had to be both scalable and fast. That work led to two US patents on geospatial correlation, on which he is first-named inventor. His current focus is new methods of space-time analysis and of automating semantic pattern analysis in large collections of text.
Black Cape is his second company. He co-founded HumanGeo and, as CTO, helped grow it from a start-up to $24 million in annual revenue. After HumanGeo was acquired by The Radiant Group, he became Radiant’s CTO, and following Radiant’s $140 million acquisition by DigitalGlobe he served as CTO of DigitalGlobe Intelligence Solutions and as a Vice President of Radiant Solutions, a Maxar division. Earlier he was a senior engineer in Google Enterprise, working on search and geospatial technology.
He was named to the FCW Federal 100 in 2015 for building an engineering team that delivered four analytic tools to the Defense Intelligence Agency in four months. In 2016 he shared the Military Operations Research Society’s David Rist Prize for the study “Data Science for Threat Finance Intelligence”. He is a co-author of the AAPOR task force report on big data in survey research and of a chapter in Illuminating Dark Networks (Cambridge University Press).
Abe is a graduate of West Point and holds an M.S. from George Mason University. He served as a US Army infantry officer and as a US Air Force cryptologist at the National Security Agency, and later supported Special Operations teams in the Middle East and Europe. He is based in Arlington, Virginia.
Name: Abe Usher. Title: Co-CEO, Black Cape.
Headshot: available on request through the contact form.