Booz Allen Hamilton Company Profile, Defense Work and Revenue

Booz Allen Hamilton is the largest consulting firm in the US defense market and, by its own account, the biggest provider of AI services to the federal government, with roughly $12 billion in annual revenue. Founded in 1914 and headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the firm earns about 98 percent of its money from US government agencies and has spent the past decade converting itself from a management consultancy into a defense technology company.

Booz Allen Hamilton at a glance

The firm began as one of the founding houses of American management consulting. Edwin Booz opened a business research practice in Chicago in 1914, James Allen and Carl Hamilton joined between the wars, and the US Navy became a landmark client during World War II. In 2008 the Carlyle Group bought the government business and spun off the commercial consultancy, and the government-focused firm that kept the name went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010.

How Booz Allen became a defense AI company

Under chief executive Horacio Rozanski, who took over in 2015, Booz Allen deliberately shed the image of slide-deck consulting. Its stated strategy, called VoLT for velocity, leadership and technology, moved hiring toward software engineers and data scientists, and the company now describes itself as the largest provider of AI services to the federal government, a claim built on hundreds of AI contracts across defense, intelligence and civil agencies.

The intelligence footprint is deep and occasionally visible. Edward Snowden was a Booz Allen contractor at the NSA when he leaked classified documents in 2013, an episode that showed how embedded the firm had become in classified missions. Today that same proximity is the product: Booz Allen engineers work inside Pentagon data programs, combatant command targeting cells and zero-trust network rollouts rather than advising from outside.

What does Booz Allen do for the Pentagon

Positioning matters here. Unlike Palantir, which sells software products, Booz Allen mostly sells cleared people and engineering services, and unlike pure IT integrators such as Leidos, it leans toward the advisory and mission-analytics end of the market. The model scales with government demand for technical talent, which is exactly what AI adoption is generating.

Booz Allen revenue and financials

Booz Allen closed fiscal 2025 with revenue just under $12 billion, up around 12 percent year over year, and a total backlog reported at roughly $37 billion. Defense and intelligence customers generate the clear majority of that book, with civil agencies contributing about a third.

The civil side is also where 2025 hurt. The federal cost-cutting drive that followed the change of administration squeezed civilian agency consulting, and the company announced cuts of roughly 2,500 jobs, concentrated in its civil business. Management has steered investment toward defense AI, cyber and classified work, the segments where budgets keep growing.

Booz Allen Ventures and the startup push

In 2022 the firm launched Booz Allen Ventures, a corporate fund initially sized at $100 million, to take stakes in defense-relevant startups. Reported investments include autonomy specialist Shield AI, satellite imaging firm Albedo and a string of AI and edge-computing companies. The logic is distribution: Booz Allen sits inside hundreds of government programs and can carry a startup’s technology to customers the startup could not reach alone.

It is a hedge, too. If the government buys more products and fewer billable hours, the firm wants equity in the products. That question, whether services firms can stay central as defense tech shifts toward software vendors, is the strategic issue hanging over the entire federal consulting sector.

Booz Allen Hamilton frequently asked questions

What does Booz Allen Hamilton do?

It provides consulting, AI, cybersecurity and engineering services, almost entirely to US government customers including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Is Booz Allen Hamilton a defense contractor?

Yes. It ranks among the largest US defense services contractors, though it sells expertise and software support rather than weapons.

Who owns Booz Allen Hamilton?

It is a public company traded on the NYSE as BAH; the Carlyle Group exited its stake years after the 2010 IPO, and ownership is now largely institutional.

How many employees does Booz Allen have?

Roughly 36,000, a large share of them holding US security clearances.

Who is the CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton?

Horacio Rozanski, chief executive since 2015 and also board chair since 2024.