Academi

Academi is an American security services training company, originally founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince. Formerly known as Blackwater, the company was renamed Xe Services in 2009; its current name came about in 2011, after the company was acquired by a group of private investors in 2010. The new investors instituted a board of directors and new senior management, Prince retained the rights to the name Blackwater and has no affiliation with Academi. Blackwater received widespread publicity in 2007, when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad for which four guards were convicted in a U.S. court.

Academi provides security services to the United States federal government on a contractual basis. The Obama administration contracted the group to provide services for the CIA for $250 million. In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92 million contract for State Department security guards.