NYSE Live - BigBear.ai CEO Kevin McAleenan Delivers Biggest Takeaways from Its Q3 Earnings

Kevin McAleenan, CEO of BigBear.ai, in conversation with Kristen Scholer on NYSE Live

On Oct. 28, 2026, BigBear.ai CEO Kevin McAleenan joined Kristen Scholer on NYSE Live.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kristen Scholer: Our next story includes NYSE-listed company BigBear.ai. It recently announced its third-quarter 2026 results. The specialized security and defense tech company is focused on its next phase of expansion. And joining me now with more is CEO and board member of BigBear.ai, Kevin McAleenan. Kevin, thank you so much for joining.

Kevin McAleenan: Good morning. Good to be with you.

Kristen Scholer: Great to have you here. Tell us the takeaways that investors should know from your earnings report.

Kevin McAleenan: Yeah, we were happy to announce earnings yesterday. Really had a lot of good news embedded there.

We got 31% growth over last year’s third quarter, our third consecutive quarter of organic growth, and really see a lot of signs that our strategy is working. We’re starting to accelerate into our growth opportunities.

Kristen Scholer: You just raised full-year revenue results. For those who don’t know, what does that mean for your company?

Kevin McAleenan: Well, we said a year ago that we were going to go on offense, that we were going to make strategic acquisitions, and then we’re going to focus on top-line growth to really take advantage of this moment in taking the emerging AI tools and applying them with our customers in secure environments.

That’s in the federal government for Department of War and intelligence community, as well as homeland security agencies, as well as for critical industries that have a security component. Think about airports and airlines, shipyards, manufacturing industry.

So we’ve done that. We’ve made two very strategic acquisitions in the last year, and for three straight quarters have grown, and we’ve also raised our guidance for the first time in BigBear’s history.

So we’re really taking advantage of the opportunity in the market and set ourselves on a path for continued growth.

Kristen Scholer: As AI demand continues to accelerate, what are you most confident about when it comes to the road ahead?

Kevin McAleenan: What I’m most confident about is that we’re really well positioned, that we have the right tools for our customer needs, that we understand their needs, because, you know, our mantra is that we’re operators, and we know what the operators need.

So we’re taking AI and applying it where they work.

Think about a CBP officer making a decision on which goods or which traveler might present a risk that they need to focus on; an intelligence analyst preparing a brief on global laydown of forces for their senior leadership; or even an operator who’s trying to coordinate a drone swarm or defend against one.

We understand their missions. We’re 20-plus percent veterans. Our executives are former operators in security industries and agencies, and so we understand their mission set and take these tools and apply them in that secure environment.

Kristen Scholer: BigBear.ai specializes in security and defense technology. Are there any products that the team is looking forward to working on?

Kevin McAleenan: Sure. I think most importantly right now is our generative AI platform. This takes the latest models and a model-agnostic approach. You can use whatever latest frontier lab; you can use open-weight models and apply them on secure networks for the government with regulatory approval.

And that means that agencies like, we announced new customers this quarter like the FBI, NASA, Department of Energy, customers that have really significant needs for high-end AI capabilities but want to use them in a secure platform where their data is not going to be exposed and where they can repeatedly use against their top model and against any model that’s the best for the task.

Whether you’re planning an Artemis mission, whether you’re working on an intelligence brief, we want to be able to provide them the right capability in that space.

Kristen Scholer: How is BigBear.ai using AI to expand its customers?

Kevin McAleenan: Yeah, absolutely. That was a big commitment when we acquired Ask Sage, which is that generative AI platform, is we were going to use it ourselves internally and really have all of our functions (certainly our BD and sales team, but even our executive, our financial professionals, our attorneys), everybody using AI first to take full advantage of the tools and ensure that we are applying them to make ourselves as efficient and effective as possible.

And we’ll see that curve extend. We’re like any other business that is starting to benefit from these tools and be able to use them day to day.

Kristen Scholer: What is next for BigBear.ai?

Kevin McAleenan: Well, we’re looking really well positioned for 2027.

You know, we see that the global trends really favor what we’re doing, whether it’s defense modernization, whether it’s changes in the global supply chain and the need to move goods quickly and securely, growth in global travel.

And really, operators are under a lot of pressure. You talked about cyber risk with the last guest. We’re seeing all kinds of threats from asymmetric capabilities of adversaries that need to be addressed, and we want to give them the tools to do that.

So we see a market that has tailwinds for it. We’ve got the right contract footing, the right credibility, and so we want to take this forward and continue to grow, continue to look for M&A targets that can bring additional capability to our customers and really enhance what we’re providing.

Kristen Scholer: All right, Kevin McAleenan, CEO and board member of BigBear.ai. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us.

Kevin McAleenan: Thank you.