Brandon Card, founder and CEO of Terzo, published an op-ed in RealClearPolicy on August 3, 2026, arguing that federal agencies should manage contracts as financial assets rather than treating them as legal or administrative paperwork. The piece, titled "Government Contracts Are a Financial Asset," highlights the Department of Defense's approximately $445 billion in annual contract obligations across roughly 226,000 active contracts, and its eight consecutive failed audits, as evidence that government agencies lack real-time visibility into what their own contracts commit them to.
"No team, regardless of experience or size, can manually understand millions of contracts on a continuous basis," Card wrote in the op-ed. He argues that AI-assisted contract analysis could give federal agencies the same kind of financial visibility into contractual obligations that Terzo's platform provides to enterprise customers, extending the case for contract intelligence from the private sector into public-sector accountability and audit readiness.
In the private sector, that visibility runs through Document AI, which extracts obligations, pricing, and terms from contracts and purchase orders, and Contract Analytics, which turns that extracted data into spend, compliance, and risk dashboards. Those are the categories of tooling Card's op-ed points to as a model for how agencies could track obligations across large contract portfolios.
The full op-ed is available on RealClearPolicy.
The implications of Card's argument extend beyond mere accounting reform. If federal agencies adopted contract intelligence tools, they could potentially avoid costly overruns, improve compliance, and provide accurate financial reporting. The Defense Department's repeated audit failures have drawn congressional scrutiny and eroded public trust. Treating contracts as financial assets would require agencies to track obligations, payments, and performance in real time, similar to how private companies manage their balance sheets. This shift could lead to better stewardship of taxpayer dollars and more informed decision-making.
Terzo, founded in 2020, operates an AI financial intelligence platform that finds money enterprises lose across their third-party and supplier spend ecosystem, including contracts, invoices, purchase orders, and renewals. The company operates in the United States, Canada, and India. Card's op-ed positions Terzo's technology as a potential solution for government agencies facing similar challenges.
While the op-ed does not announce a specific government contract or product launch, it signals a strategic push to bring contract intelligence into the public sector. As federal budgets face increasing pressure, the ability to automatically analyze and manage contracts could become a critical capability. For readers, this debate matters because it affects how effectively the government spends tax dollars and whether agencies can pass audits. For the industry, it represents a potential new market for AI-driven financial tools. For the world, improved government contract management could lead to more efficient public services and reduced waste.
