Market
Robotics and Autonomy
Unmanned systems, robotics and autonomy software.
Where the Money Lands
Obligations by fiscal year (all recipients)
Table view
| Fiscal year | Obligations |
|---|---|
| FY2015 | $1.98B |
| FY2016 | $2.26B |
| FY2017 | $2.33B |
| FY2018 | $2.10B |
| FY2019 | $2.45B |
| FY2020 | $1.72B |
| FY2021 | $1.36B |
| FY2022 | $1.95B |
| FY2023 | $2.07B |
| FY2024 | $2.56B |
| FY2025 | $2.72B |
| FY2026 (partial) | $3.66B |
Top buying agencies of covered companiesFY2023 onward
| Buying agency | Awards | Obligations FY2023+ |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Army | 826 | $4.54B |
| U.S. Air Force | 500 | $3.61B |
| U.S. Navy | 208 | $2.11B |
| U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement | 55 | $292M |
| U.S. Department of Energy | 16 | $119M |
| U.S. Special Operations Command | 39 | $80.0M |
| US Coast Guard | 82 | $64.5M |
| NASA | 12 | $54.6M |
| Office of Procurement Operations (Homeland Security) | 6 | $32.5M |
| Defense Contract Management Agency | 59 | $28.0M |
| U.S. Customs and Border Protection | 74 | $25.4M |
| Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency | 5 | $24.0M |
Awards to the covered companies only, so these amounts are a part of the sector total, not a split of it.
Fiscal years marked * are partial: data is incomplete after FY2025.
Primes20
| Company | Type | All federal FY2023+ | In this sector | Share of sector | FY2021 to FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lockheed Martin | Prime | $246.44B | $25.9M | 0.2% | −89% |
| RTX | Prime | $110.38B | $20.9M | 0.2% | −35% |
| Boeing | Prime | $98.54B | $148M | 1.3% | −18% |
| Northrop Grumman | Prime | $61.99B | $1.35B | 12% | +60% |
| HII | Prime | $32.47B | $0 | 0.0% | — |
| BAE Systems | Prime | $30.25B | $47.0M | 0.4% | −47% |
| L3Harris Technologies | Prime | $24.73B | $2.5M | 0.0% | −100% |
| Leidos | Prime | $19.92B | $369M | 3.4% | — |
| ADS | Prime | $19.46B | $26.0M | 0.2% | +1561% |
| General Atomics | Prime | $10.03B | $3.04B | 28% | +19% |
| Textron | Prime | $9.87B | −$5.8M | -0.1% | — |
| Sierra Nevada Company | Prime | $8.45B | $0 | 0.0% | −100% |
| V2X | Prime | $4.05B | $216K | 0.0% | — |
| Austal USA | Prime | $2.98B | $0 | 0.0% | — |
| Palantir Technologies | Neoprime | $2.94B | $2.93B | 27% | +660% |
| Anduril Industries | Neoprime | $2.53B | $174M | 1.6% | — |
| Kongsberg Gruppen | Prime | $2.37B | $0 | 0.0% | — |
| AeroVironment | Prime | $1.98B | $774M | 7.0% | −3.1% |
| Elbit Systems | Prime | $446M | $0 | 0.0% | — |
| Kratos Defense & Security Solutions | Prime | $404M | $218M | 2.0% | −100% |
Primes and neoprimes that work in robotics and autonomy, ranked by all their federal obligations from FY2023 onward. A company can belong to several sectors; "In this sector" counts only the awards assigned here, so sector totals never count an award twice.
Entering and Growing511
New entrants by fiscal year
Table view
| Fiscal year | Companies |
|---|---|
| FY2016 | 0 |
| FY2017 | 2 |
| FY2018 | 1 |
| FY2019 | 4 |
| FY2020 | 5 |
| FY2021 | 1 |
| FY2022 | 0 |
| FY2023 | 4 |
| FY2024 | 3 |
| FY2025 | 0 |
| FY2026 (partial) | 4 |
| Company | Type | Defense relevance | First FY with obligations | All federal FY2023+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W S Darley & Co | Supplier | Core defense | FY2008 | $5.22B |
| Modern Technology Solutions, Inc. | Supplier | Core defense | FY2008 | $575M |
| Shield AI | Startup | Core defense | FY2020 | $82.2M |
| PacMar Technologies | Supplier | Core defense | FY2008 | $77.3M |
| Darkhive | Startup | Core defense | FY2022 | $64.3M |
| Firestorm Labs | Startup | Core defense | FY2023 | $53.8M |
| Applied Intuition | Supplier | Dual use | FY2011 | $34.6M |
| Onebrief | Startup | Core defense | FY2019 | $29.6M |
| Picogrid | Startup | Core defense | FY2021 | $27.6M |
| Virtualitics | Startup | Dual use | FY2019 | $27.3M |
| Etegent Technologies, Ltd. | Supplier | Dual use | FY2008 | $16.7M |
| Compound Eye | Startup | Dual use | FY2023 | $16.5M |
| Overland AI | Startup | Core defense | FY2023 | $11.4M |
| Anno.AI | Startup | Dual use | FY2019 | $10.6M |
| Asylon | Startup | Dual use | FY2019 | $9.7M |
| Magma Space | Startup | Dual use | FY2020 | $4.3M |
| MatrixSpace | Startup | Dual use | FY2021 | $3.3M |
| HYPERKELP | Startup | Dual use | FY2023 | $3.0M |
| Beacon AI | Startup | Dual use | FY2023 | $2.6M |
| Mavrik, Inc. | Supplier | Dual use | FY2026 | $2.0M |
| Easy Aerial | Startup | Core defense | FY2020 | $1.3M |
| 1415 Industries | Startup | Core defense | — | No federal prime contracts on record |
| 2nd Order Effects | Startup | Core defense | — | No federal prime contracts on record |
| 3DTech | Startup | Core defense | — | No federal prime contracts on record |
| AA Defence ApS | Supplier | Dual use | — | No federal prime contracts on record |
Showing 25 of 511. See the full list
Startups and suppliers tagged to this sector whose defense relevance is core defense or dual use. Those with obligations since FY2023 come first, then the rest alphabetically.
Coverage
The sector total is the whole in-scope USAspending baseline (DoD, DHS, DOE and NASA, FY2008 onward): every recipient, net of de-obligations, with flood insurance and DHS disaster assistance excluded (see the methodology). The company rows below are attributed per action, to the company reported on each row, so they cover only the companies DefDex has reviewed and are a part of the total, not all of it. Subcontracts and classified work are not visible here, and fiscal year 2027 is partial.
Each award counts in one sector, set by its product or service code, then its industry code, then the company's primary sector, then the buying department. A company's primary sector comes from where most of its obligations since FY2020 sit. Companies without obligations are tagged by AI from their descriptions; see the methodology.