Day 2 at AUVSI #XPONENTIAL 2026 complete.
Had a great day reconnecting with existing partners and vendors while also meeting a lot of new companies across the autonomy and robotics ecosystem.
David Kovar + Adam T. Shaw + Ido Gur
.Bobby Sakaki + François-Xavier Charbonnel + Matt Isenbarger
Skyfish
I came into today specifically looking for enhanced and robust communications systems, but one topic kept surfacing in conversations: scale.
Often, discussions with companies eventually led to the same questions from me:
“What are your lead times?”
“What production volumes can you support?”
The answers were often similar:
8–16 week lead times, very low production volumes, limited automation, and little evidence of scalable manufacturing capability.
I’ve spent a lot of my career around 0-to-1 hardware products, and I fully understand how difficult scaling physical systems can be. This industry is reaching a point where building a working prototype is no longer enough.
If a product isn’t designed from day one to be mass produced, serviced, supported, and integrated into a complete ecosystem, long-term success becomes extremely difficult. In this industry, repeat customers depend on reliability, availability, margins, and sustainment.
I wouldn’t say scale is more important than reliability or functionality — but business is still business.
That’s one of the biggest challenges the USA-based, NDAA-compliant, and Blue UAS ecosystem still needs to solve.
Overall though, the expo floor felt incredibly well-rounded this year. Vendors covered nearly every layer of robotics and autonomy: sensors, manufacturing, compute, communications, propulsion, software, autonomy stacks, power systems, payloads, and platforms.
One major takeaway for me: outside of direct military sales, this was very much a B2B-focused show. The conversations felt less about hype and more about integration, supply chain, deployment, sustainment, and operational capability.
I’m curious what you think:
What technologies, companies, or product categories do you feel need more representation at the Xpo?
#Scale #Ecosystem #DMCA #Security #Supplychain #AUVSI
