An "AI Fight Club" is set to open later this year.
Contrived by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), the club will invite any willing company to enter AI models in a no-holds-barred battle royale.
We’re talking about a head-to-head competition between some of Silicon Valley’s brightest minds across every conceivable domain — air, land, sea, and space.
“We’re going to be inviting anybody who wants to get their AI up against the government environment with our native test and evaluation setup to determine how well their systems are performing,” says John Clark, Lockheed’s senior vice president of technology and strategic innovation.
Lockheed Martin will provide the controlled environment, guaranteeing the sanctity of intellectual property. (After all, the first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about it.) However, participants will have the opportunity to present and publish their research and results.
And that’s not all.
A crowd of government representatives will be granted access to observe and engage with participants. This will give AI startups that prove their mettle a chance to horn in on lucrative government contracts.
They might also find themselves in business with the world’s largest defense contractor.
You didn’t think Lockheed Martin was doing this for fun, did you?
No, what the company is really doing is making a space for AI tech companies to put up or shut up. And once it separates the contenders from the pretenders, it'll be first in line to bring the heavyweights on as suppliers, or even acquire them outright.
Indeed, this is a very clever way for Lockheed Martin to get a glimpse at cutting-edge AI and vet potential partners.
Still, it’s an enticing opportunity for newcomers that don’t have the credibility or resources of larger tech firms like Google, Amazon, and Meta.
Just consider that Lockheed Martin itself distributes roughly 60% of its $70 billion in revenue to suppliers.
And so Lockheed will finalize the structure of the AI Fight Club based on participation levels over the next few months, and the first competition is set to take place in the fourth quarter of this year.
We’ll have to wait to see what winners emerge from the fray, but as I said, Lockheed Martin clearly stands to gain from this endeavor. And in fact, the company has been on a bit of a roll lately.
The company’s latest earnings report (released in April) showed a 10% increase in net income, as revenue expanded every division outside of Space. Earnings of $7.28 per share handily topped the Wall Street consensus of $6.34 per share.
Two segments in particular drove growth: missile systems and fighter jets.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the missile business is booming right now.
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America has dispatched thousands of missiles to Ukraine and Israel to aid in their respective war efforts.
Now we need to backfill that inventory — even as those conflicts rage on.
Lockheed Martin makes some big ones, too.
New contracts for Precision Strike Missiles, THAAD and JASSM/LRASM, as well as the Trident II D5 Life Extension, added $10 billion to the company’s backlog in the last quarter.
But that’s not all.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program, which makes up 30% of its revenue, also regained traction.
The company delivered 47 F-35 jets in the first quarter of 2025, which was a little ahead of the guided pace. And the company expects to deliver between 170 and 190 aircraft total this year.
The global F-35 fleet has grown to over 1,100 aircraft, and Lockheed Martin aims to produce 156 new units each year through 2027.
And finally, Lockheed left its full-year guidance unchanged at a range of $73.8 billion–$74.8 billion. That suggests that any blowback the company receives from tariffs will be minor as well.
Now, if the company can use its AI Fight Club to further leverage in-house AI development and integration, it could see even more growth in the years ahead.
Still, that growth will pale in comparison to the smaller tech companies that are really driving AI.
And that’s why I recently launched this latest report on Donald Trump's "AI Victory Plan." It has all the details on the most advanced AI defense stocks.
So be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.
Fight on,
Jason Simpkins
Simpkins is the founder and editor of Secret Stock Files, an investment service that focuses on companies with assets — tangible resources and products that can hold and appreciate in value. He covers mining companies, energy companies, defense contractors, dividend payers, commodities, staples, legacies and more…
In 2023 he joined The Wealth Advisory team as a defense market analyst where he reviews and recommends new military and government opportunities that come across his radar, especially those that spin-off healthy, growing income streams. For more on Jason, check out his editor’s page.
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