Standardized autonomy stacks enable scale
Scott Sanders, chief growth officer at Forterra, on the defense tech startup playbook
The real advantage was not just buying more chips, it was designing one repeatable hardware and software stack that could absorb supply shocks. In practice, that means the same compute, sensors, and code get reused across many vehicle types, so procurement can place larger orders, engineering only validates one core system, and new platforms can be brought up in weeks instead of years. Tesla showed the same pattern during the 2021 semiconductor crunch by rapidly adapting firmware to alternative chips, while Forterra is applying that logic to defense and industrial autonomy.
-
Forterra has been explicit that its single product, multi market model is meant to create low hardware cost through scale. The company says the same autonomy kit can go onto a military truck or a yard tractor, which lets it buy parts in larger batches and avoids re qualifying a custom stack for every vehicle.
-
This is also why horizontal autonomy players can move faster than vertical specialists. Forterra says it can spin up a new platform beta in about 60 days because it is not redesigning LiDAR, compute, and sensor plumbing each time. Shield AI follows a similar pattern in air systems, reusing one autonomy base across multiple aircraft and contract types.
-
The contrast with legacy OEMs is organizational as much as technical. Tesla reported in April 2021 that it navigated the chip shortage by switching quickly to new microcontrollers and writing new firmware for them. Ford, by contrast, warned in early 2021 that the semiconductor shortage could cut about $1 billion to $2.5 billion from EBIT, showing how harder to swap, less unified architectures create bigger exposure.
Going forward, the winners in autonomy are likely to look less like bespoke vehicle programs and more like standardized compute platforms with many shells around them. As defense demand shifts toward thousands of deployable robotic systems, companies that can reuse the same bill of materials, software, and supplier base across missions should widen the gap on cost, delivery speed, and resilience.