If you were paying attention to the news coming out of Eurosatory last week, one thing was extremely clear: Everyone (and we mean everyone) is making moves to go cross-domain. And that’s especially true for German defense darling Quantum Systems.
Last week, the company made two announcements that solidify its status as very much not just a UAV company: First, the company announced that it’s teaming up with Daimler to build “automated transport vehicles” (drone trucks) for the German Armed Forces.
Then, on Friday, the company announced that it had been selected (as part of its joint venture with Ukrainian UGV producer Tencore) to deliver 2,000 TerMIT UGVs to the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the next year.
With that—plus the whole PULSE P19 super-drone thing at the Berlin Air Show—it looks like QS is pushing hard for that European neoprime title.
Eye in the sky: Quantum Systems has been making a heck of a lot of news lately, so you’ll be familiar with their backstory.
- The company was founded by a team led by Florian Seibel back in 2015 and started out building heavy-hitting ISR drones.
- The company is now led by Seibel and co-CEO Sven Kruck, who joined the team in 2022.
- Last year, the company raised a €160M ($186M) Series C and a €180M ($209M) Series C extension, both led by Balderton Capital. Then, in February, they scored another €150M ($178M) in financing.
Buy it up: They’ve used a lot of that cash money to expand way (and we mean way) beyond their aerial drone origins.
- Late last year, the company bought up ground autonomy company FERNRIDE, which the company at the time said “[expanded] its leadership position from air and software intelligence to autonomous ground mobility, creating a connected, cross-domain offering for intelligent unmanned systems.”
- Then, back in April, they teamed up with Tencore—which they’re working with on this new Ukraine deal—to scale up production of the tried and tested Ukrainian UGVs in Europe.
- The two companies launched a joint venture—Quantum Tencore Industries—as part of the “Build with Ukraine” initiative. FWIW, Quantum also has a joint drone venture with Ukraine’s WIY drones and Frontline Robotics.
Baby tank: The UGV deal for Ukraine will be funded by the German Armed Forces and marks the first contract for the Tencore joint venture with Tencore—fittingly called Quantum Tencore Industries (QTI).
- The idea here is to massively (and immediately) scale up production of Tencore-designed ground robots in Germany.
- For context: TerMIT is a multi-mission UGV designed to carry out everything from “logistics [to] field support, evacuation, and engineering tasks.” (Think autonomous baby tank). It’s been used on the battlefield in Ukraine since 2023—QS says it has carried out thousands of missions.
- The UGVs will be produced in collaboration with an unnamed “established industrial partner” in Germany.
Worth noting that this is one of the largest (known) UGV procurements in Europe to date.
Trucking along: With the Daimler team-up, QS is thinking bigger (forgive the pun).
- The push for an autonomous truck is part of the German Armed Forces’ Interoperable Robotic Convoy (InterRoC) research initiative. The partnership with Daimler was first launched back in March.
- The idea here is to develop “highly automated truck convoys for use in demanding military scenarios.”
- QS’ vehicle autonomy stack (via Fernride) will be built onto Daimler trucks. Helpful that Daimler is pretty much the largest truck manufacturer in the Western world by revenue.
- The goal here isn’t just to develop one fun prototype truck for the Bundeswehr to play around with—they want to develop a whole system of vehicles that can help keep people out of dangerous logistics and resupply missions. QS and Daimler will also work with the German Armed Forces to develop a certification and standardization process for autonomous military vehicles.
“The massive expansion of the Bundeswehr’s logistics force can only be achieved through highly automated and autonomous ground vehicles,” Quantum Systems VP of Land Hendrik Kramer said in a statement. “The Bundeswehr needs a scalable and resilient logistics system that functions reliably even with limited personnel resources.”