Well, our friends in Munich are having quite the week.
This morning—hot on the heels of announcing a joint venture with Frontline Robotics, and two weeks after raising a cool €180M—German drone giant Quantum Systems announced that it’s acquired ground autonomy company FERNRIDE.
QS says that this “[expands] its leadership position from air and software intelligence to autonomous ground mobility, creating a connected, cross-domain offering for intelligent unmanned systems.”
In layman’s terms: Quantum Systems is entering the ground autonomy game, baby.
Trucking along: If you read Tectonic (like, yesterday’s edition of Tectonic), you’ll know a fair bit about Quantum Systems, so let’s kick things off with FERNRIDE.
The Munich-based company actually didn’t start out in defense—Hendrik Kramer (CEO), Maximilian Fisser, and Jean-Michael Georg co-founded the company back in 2019 to build autonomous vehicles for logistics.
- The company has developed a vehicle autonomy stack that looks a heck of a lot like the cab of a truck that can take existing fleets and make them autonomous.
- A lot of FERNRIDE’s work has been used for goods transport—retrofitting trucks to make them autonomous in places like logistics yards and container ports.
- In recent years, the company has taken a hard look at defense—heavy logistics are pretty critical to war fighting, after all, and their platform can retrofit defense logistics trucks just like it can retrofit commercial vehicles.
- This year, the company snagged TÜV (basically road safety) approval for its autonomous trucks in Europe—the first ground autonomy company to do so.
FERNRIDE has raised over €75M in funding and has tested its vehicles with the German Armed Forces, according to Quantum Systems’ statement. The company’s platform is already being used at Muuga Port in Estonia and tested by logistics firm DB Schenker, Volkswagen, and others.
Speed networking: Quantum Systems frames this move into ground autonomy as a logical extension of their work with aerial drones. In particular, they say their “operational experience in Ukraine has demonstrated the relevance of the interaction between air and ground robotics.” That’s why they’re so keen to move into land-based autonomy.
- FERNRIDE’s kit will be integrated into MOSAIC UXS, QS’ autonomous mission software.
- The vision is to build an interconnected, multi-domain autonomous family of systems.
“By integrating [FERNRIDE’s] technology into MOSAIC UXS, we are consistently implementing our vision of creating a connected ecosystem in which unmanned systems think, move and act as a single entity across different dimensions,” Quantum Systems CRO Martin Karkour said in a statement.
Feeding frenzy: Quantum Systems has been on a bit of a shopping spree lately. In 2025 alone, the company acquired (or scooped up a majority stake in) four other companies beyond FERNRIDE:
- AirRobot GmbH: A UAV manufacturer that makes robust, compact drones—including copter drones.
- Nordic Unmanned UK: A UK-based drone manufacturer. This facilitated QS’ move into the UK, and the company has committed to investing about €50M in the country.
- Spleenlab GmbH: A German AI company focused on autonomous perception and machine learning technologies.
- EFT Mobility: QS acquired majority shares in the company—which is known for building powertrains—back in January.
Plus, Quantum Systems CEO Florian Seibel founded unmanned weapons company STARK last year, but has stepped away from day-to-day operations since. STARK, for what it’s worth, has also made a multi-domain push in recent months with a new line of USVs unveiled in September.
European drone army, here we come.