PICASSO

Arlington, Va. – November 03, 2026 -- Raytheon, an RTX business (NYSE: RTX), has won a phase one contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an all-optical processing system for the agency's Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) program. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Raytheon's Advanced Technology team will design photonic circuits that process signals with light, not electricity

Under the contract, the team will design and demonstrate photonic circuit technology that handles signal processing entirely in the optical domain. Raytheon says this lets operators detect threats sooner, respond faster and keep better situational awareness in contested environments.

European Union – October 31, 2026 -- The EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) has approved amended implementation frameworks for the PICASSO and MARI electricity balancing platforms. It adopted Decisions 12/2026 and 13/2026 and added three prequalification options for balancing service providers (BSPs).

ACER received both proposals from all electricity transmission system operators (TSOs) on 18 December 2025. PICASSO coordinates cross-border exchanges of automatically activated balancing energy. MARI coordinates manually activated balancing energy. Both platforms draw on frequency restoration reserves.