Forget everything we’ve said about contested logistics being unsexy—it’s about as hot as it gets right now, and Rune’s carving quite a nice niche for itself in the space.
In an exclusive release to Tectonic this morning, the contested logistics and frontline sustainment AI startup announced its biggest win yet: A five-year, $99M contract with the Army for its TyrOS software, structured as an enterprise agreement open to pretty much any Army component and joint force partner that wants it.
Rune on a run: As regular Tectonic readers will know, Rune is moving quickly to solidify itself as the military’s go-to replacement for all of the whiteboards, Excel spreadsheets, and pen-and-paper planning logisticians have relied on for years. If contested logistics is involved, there’s a solid chance Rune has their hands in it.
The company has been tapped to provide the contested logistics software for both of the Army’s Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototyping teams (the only company working across them), the Marine Corps’ Project Dynamis C2 modernization initiative, and the Army’s PORTAL (Predict, Optimize, Recommend, and Track for Adaptive Logistics) program.
Rune’s TyrOS platform is the company’s secret sauce:
- The platform is built to operate on everything from low-connectivity edge devices to the command level, using predictive AI and tons of data to track and optimize the movement of gear, fuel, food, and parts more quickly across domains than legacy sustainment systems.
- Rune recently rolled out a frontline AI agent inside TyrOS called Saga, designed around sustaining and restoring a force to combat effectiveness (i.e., reconstitution).
- They also introduced an Autonomy Development Kit (ADK), designed to collate all the logistics and telemetry data for autonomous vehicles—from fuel or battery levels and readiness to vehicle class, cargo capacity, and demand—and optimize their distribution, scheduling, and tasking through TyrOS.
Everything Everywhere All at Once: The 25th Infantry Division, 4th ID, XVIII Airborne Corps, 1st Cavalry Division, and Marine Corps components already use TyrOS, but Rune’s $99M contract with the Army Contracting Command makes it available to any other Army customer and joint force partner through streamlined task orders placed against the IDIQ contract.
“It’s an agreement with the Army, but it allows and has been built for joint warfighting applicability,” Rune’s Head of Growth, Kyle Haire, told Tectonic. “Every service, every component, and every flavor can leverage this contract vehicle, so it’s not only a trajectory for the Army, it is the trajectory for the joint force.”
He added that the first task order has already been placed, “with a few in contracting right now.”
Built to scale: TyrOS and all of the recent upgrades Rune’s made to the platform—namely Saga and the ADK—are included in the deal, but it’s built to scale and adapt as Rune rolls out new features and improvements.
“As we [introduce] more products, it’ll be fully inclusive of the full suite of capabilities and apply the most flexibility for the end user to get exactly what they need as fast as humanly possible,” Haire said. “We’re going to take full advantage of this in the capability as we continue to deliver and perform and meet and exceed expectations.”
“It is my absolute objective in life to blow the lid right off of this [contract],” he added.
Full steam ahead.