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Formula 1 is close to reaching 1 billion fans across the globe, rising from 12% year over year from 2024 to 2025., with the current figure standing somewhere around 800 million.

To try and capture some of this huge potential market, the TGR Haas team has partnered with Infobip, resulting in a novel way to stay engaged with fans while funding car development through merchandise marketing.

RaceMate is an AI-powered fan companion that provides conversational updates on the team’s grid positions, race and qualifying outcomes, and team race intelligence.

At Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, I spoke to Michael Heath, Senior Fan Engagement & CRM Manager at TGR Haas F1 Team, and Ante Pamuković, Chief Revenue Officer at Infobip, to discuss how RaceMate has changed the face of fan engagement throughout the 2026 season.

Following the launch, Haas ran several highly successful fan quizzes through the Racemate chat - but Heath and the team noticed that fans were engaging in an entirely unexpected way.

“We actually started to see that fans were then asking this WhatsApp channel questions, but at the time we didn't have any capabilities built into it that would respond,” he explained. “That was ultimately what fans wanted to do, how they wanted to interact, that's kind of where RaceMate was then born from.”

Racemate runs on Infobip’s AgentOS platform, which has allowed Haas to set guardrails on the topics of conversation users can begin, and helps steer fans back on to relevant topics about TGR Haas.

“This is where we saw actually the spike of more and more people joining the conversations and actually more of them returning,” said Pamukovic. “We saw up to 30% of returning fans to the platform, which is quite high.”

A challenge TGR Haas is attempting to counter is the banning of social media for under 16s, as many Formula 1 fans use social media as their first point of contact for engaging with teams and drivers.

“We need to have a place where, one: it's safe for them to be, but two: they can still get all the information that they're used to getting,” Heath explains.

“When you look at short form video content that they can get on Instagram right now, can we now start delivering that to them through Racemate because it's a safer platform where there's not all of the comments and negativity which is associated to it, but it's still on something which they feel like they own and operate and isn't just a commercial brand shouting at them loudest,” he adds.

RaceMate is available directly through the WhatsApp Business Platform and Apple Messages for Business.

“It's on a communication channel that you already have effectively, rather than making you download something else and remembering to go there,” Heath explains.

One of the most important parts of fan engagement is creating a revenue stream without making it cost to be a fan. “Race mate for us is great because it's a very low barrier of entry,” Heath says. “Once they're then in and they can start engaging, then we can start capturing their data, and then once we've got the data we can then start to build that 1 to 1 relationship, start to build that profile type.”

“I think that's gonna have more waiting for commercial value rather than charging the fan directly,” he adds.

Pamuković concurs with Heath’s point. “We see all of these different components, different silos merging into one, and being able to create the data and then use it to the best possible extent. This is the way forward. Understanding the interactions, the fans, the behaviour, what drives them, what motivates them, and then of course how to best serve them.”

To that end, Racemate includes a feature that allows users to virtually try on team merchandise before making a purchase - something I very much enjoyed testing.

Looking into the future, Heath has big plans for Racemate. “I want Racemate to be the second screen. So if you are watching the race or you're not in the house and you want to know what's going on in the race and you want to get closer to the action, I want Racemate to become that home.”

Racemate also has the potential to help new fans learn more about race strategy, and the general rules surrounding Formula 1.

“Can we basically use Race Mate to unlock that conversation in fairly simple terms so that a fan can start to understand what they're looking at on a pit wall? So that a fan can start to understand why they've made a pit stop at a certain point? What window are they trying to come back out into?” Heath asks.

“Because I think to truly understand the sport you need to understand all of those touch points.”

Imagine a world where the most powerful weapon isn't a missile, but a software update. In less than 72 hours, a software engineer can patch a drone on the front line and turn an enemy's multi-million-dollar electronic warfare system into little more than expensive scrap.

This isn't science fiction but an everyday reality inside Ukraine’s real-time military tech pipeline. Driven by the necessity of national survival, a decentralized network of coders, startup founders, and makers has bypassed decades of slow defense bureaucracy.

At the heart of this transformation is Brave1, Ukraine's defense innovation engine, where software developers, startups, soldiers, and investors collaborate at startup speed to solve battlefield problems. In the newly launched Brave1 Market, an ecommerce-style procurement catalog, combat success earns digital "ePoints," public rankings fuel competition, and rewards are reinvested into even more powerful technology.

It’s no surprise that Brave1’s success has attracted global attention, with aerospace giant Airbus partnering with the platform to connect aerospace expertise with this next-gen defense ecosystem. Also backed by big-data titan Palantir, the new Brave1 Dataroom acts as a secure data pipeline, streaming raw battlefield video and thermal imagery directly to developers training AI targeting models.

Now, we can forget all about old-school defense programs and endless procurement cycles. The future of warfare is open source, software-defined, and moving at the warp speed of a Silicon Valley startup.

The traditional model of military procurement is running on outdated code. For over half a century, the Western defense industry has been building bigger, better, and increasingly expensive "exquisite beasts" - fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and heavy armor, each taking a decade to design and deploy.

Under this system, the pipeline is painfully slow. Governments can spend years defining specifications, years selecting contractors, and years more building the hardware.

By the time it reaches the battlefield, the software inside is often two decades out of date and locked behind proprietary code that can't be modified without years of legal renegotiations. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, traditional defense structures struggle to absorb the rapid pace of software and startup-led innovation.

This peacetime bureaucracy is breaking under the speed of modern warfare. Today's battlefield is defined less by firepower than software, where an overnight update can render even the most sophisticated missile system obsolete. Legacy defense structures simply can’t cut it for software-speed innovation. They prioritize caution and consensus, while modern defense tech is designed for speed and to survive battlefield surprises.

At its core, the old defense playbook presumes weapons are built once and fielded for decades later. But when a new battlefield threat emerges, waiting a year or two for a budget committee to approve a software patch is a recipe for defeat.

Modern warfare demands systems that can evolve every day. By decoupling software from hardware, these defense ecosystems empower thousands of developers to adapt faster than any centralized procurement committee ever could. At the forefront of this transformation is Brave1, Ukraine's open source tech cluster.

If traditional defense procurement is a labyrinth of government departments and endless paperwork, Brave1 is the system built to bypass it. Co-founded by multiple Ukrainian ministries, including Digital Transformation, Defense, and Strategic Industries, this platform gives anyone with a laptop and a promising idea a path to the battlefield. It brings developers, startups, investors, and soldiers into a continuous deployment cycle.

In the old-school defense world, getting a new, innovative idea in front of the right people takes months. Brave1 acts as a secure, digitized buffer zone where developers upload their designs or code, pass automated and expert reviews, and connect directly to the problems facing Ukraine’s military.

Once a project clears Brave1’s gateway, it receives an official security rating, gets access to the centralized technology registry, and can scale research and development (R&D) grants reaching up to eight million UAH to fast-track production.

However, this high-speed model comes with its own set of challenges. When hundreds of teams are sprinting to solve battlefield problems, some will run along parallel paths, spreading funding and talent across versions of similar technology. The result is a risk of fragmented resources spread across an ecosystem built for speed and experimentation.

Still, by swapping endless military paperwork for the automated Brave1 Market, the platform ensures that promising ideas don't get stuck in red tape.

The speed at which Brave1 has grown turns traditional defense economics entirely on its head. What started as a bold innovation hub has evolved into a full-scale defense technology engine. Today, Brave1 brings together more than 3,200 registered companies and actively tracks over 4,500 products moving through its secure development pipeline.

Yet innovations don't win wars unless they can be implemented. Rather than relying on sluggish defense grant cycles, Brave1 has awarded 500 direct innovation grants totaling over $11 million, putting funding directly into the hands of frontline engineers and hardware startups. This pipeline is designed to bridge the notorious hardware "valley of death," where many promising technologies traditionally run out of money.

Instead of focusing on billion-dollar missiles or heavy armored vehicles, Brave1 targets technologies that are reshaping modern warfare. Its product catalog spans a wide scope of specialized, software-driven technology verticals, including:

• Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): As we write, more than 1,000 manufacturers are building next-generation drones, ranging from AI-powered attack drones and long-range reconnaissance systems to fiber-optic-guided drones that bypass conventional radio jamming.
• Naval and autonomous sea drones: More than 50 manufacturers are developing uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) that use autonomy and swarm tactics to challenge conventional naval superiority at a fraction of the cost.
• Automated electronic warfare (EW and SIGINT): Over 350 companies are building compact electronic warfare systems, software-defined jammers, and smart spectrum analyzers that can adapt to hostile drone frequencies on the fly.
• AI and computer vision products: More than 300 software-centric companies are building the digital brains behind modern warfare, from intelligent targeting systems and automated image recognition to swarm coordination and AI-assisted decision-making.
• Robotic ground complexes (UGVs): Over 280 manufacturers are building autonomous ground robots that take on the battlefield's most dangerous tasks, from delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded to laying mines and other frontline operations.

However, the ecosystem's biggest advantage is also one of its technical hurdles. Thousands of independent systems must work seamlessly together, on the same battlefield, requiring constant software integration so drones, electronic warfare systems, and ground robots can form a synchronized network.

Unlike traditional defense programs built around closed systems and proprietary codebases, Brave1 embraces an open ecosystem framework inspired by the world of open-source software.

It’s no secret that traditional defense innovation is built around extreme secrecy, where companies protect their intellectual property at the cost of collective advancements. Brave1 takes a completely different course by encouraging developers to share code, 3D-printing schematics, hardware blueprints, and engineering know-how across their networks.

The open architecture is already going global. The Ukrainian government officially passed the Brave International framework to open up the ecosystem to allied defense partners. Brave France, developed alongside the French Defence Innovation Agency (AID), pairs joint funding with battlefield testing through Test in Ukraine, fast-tracking tech innovations from lab to field.

This openness comes with a cost, and it’s a bigger cyber battlefield. Every new developer, repository, and software dependency increases the number of potential attack vectors, making zero trust a network a must. Now, rather than targeting finished weapons, sophisticated attackers focus on the software supply chain that builds them. In an ecosystem like Brave1, even a single compromised software package could cascade through countless downstream systems before a security gap is identified.

If Brave1 is the military’s revolutionary software stack, capital is the processing power that drives the code.

To understand how Brave1 moves with the speed of a Silicon Valley startup, we first have to follow the money. In traditional defense networks, getting an innovation grant involves a multi-month marathon of paperwork, compliance, and risk assessment. For tech startups, this creates an administrative bottleneck better known as the "valley of death," where promising ideas collapse before they ever reach the battlefield.

Brave1 bypasses this hurdle with a decentralized, non-dilutive funding model built for wartime speed. Developers submit applications through a unified digital interface, where an inter-ministerial panel evaluates each project's potential battlefield impact. Successful applicants receive early-stage funding within weeks, allowing them to spend their time on engineering rather than filling out paperwork.

Once a prototype is approved, it enters the Brave1 Market, a secure digital marketplace that works much like an enterprise app store for the military. Through the recently launched Buyer's Cabinet, verified commanders can browse a catalog of vetted domestic technologies, compare specifications and battlefield performance, and purchase equipment directly through the platform, dramatically shortening the journey from prototype to deployment.

Brave1 Market is bound up with Ukraine's points-based battlefield system dubbed the ePoints system, which applies game mechanics to battlefield breakthroughs. Frontline units earn these points for verified combat results, and every confirmed strike against enemy assets is recorded through military situational awareness systems. These actions feed into an active, real-time Call of Duty-style leaderboard run by the Unmanned Systems Forces, which allows onlookers to track top drone units via the military's official online killboard.

Afterward, units can redeem their accumulated ePoints as an internal digital currency directly inside the marketplace to purchase newer, more powerful drone hardware or electronic warfare (EW) kits. This type of decentralized purchasing power bypasses top-down supply chains altogether, allowing commanders to fill their digital shopping carts with the exact tools they need based on real-world performance data.

However, the system's greatest strength, its flexibility, also creates one of its biggest pain points. When individual military units have the freedom to buy specialized equipment from hundreds of small suppliers, standardizing spare parts, software support, and maintenance protocols across the entire military infrastructure becomes a serious operational challenge.

The main mechanism of this software-defined ecosystem is its split-second adaptability. In the world of EW, signal-jamming frequencies can change overnight, rendering entire drone fleets ineffective. Updating a weapon's electronic systems requires months of contractor negotiations, approval processes, and engineering changes, which is much slower than the speed at which modern threats evolve.

Inside the Brave1 network, this logistical nightmare is treated as a fast-paced development sprint:

1. Telemetry capture: When a drone at the front line detects a new jamming frequency, it automatically records the hostile signal pattern, creating data for future countermeasures.
2. Data pipeline: Raw battlefield data is transferred from frontline systems into centralized developer environments, where engineers can analyze threats and come up with next-gen countermeasures.
3. Patch deployment: As soon as a new threat is identified, engineers can adjust the software, updating radio-frequency configuration or terminal tracking code, without swapping out any hardware.
4. Over-the-air update: The updated software patch is compiled and pushed right back to the frontline within 72 hours.

While it all sounds beautiful on paper, when you move code from a lab into a muddy trench, things can get messy. As you can already guess, the real bottleneck isn’t the tech - it’s the human factor. Constantly updating software requires frontline operators to learn new configurations, radio profiles, and interfaces in high-stress situations. Requiring soldiers to run updates in the middle of a mission creates an enormous margin for error, showing that even the slickest software must ultimately work within human limits.

To shorten the path from prototype to deployment, Brave1 relies on the official Test in Ukraine program. Instead of spending years in laboratory simulations to clear traditional safety benchmarks, promising prototypes undergo swift safety checks before moving into live combat, turning battlefield feedback into the next immediate upgrade.

For instance, if an optical tracker fails in heavy dust or a carbon-fiber chassis breaks under stress, developers receive real-time frontline feedback. What the process gains in speed, however, it sacrifices in long-term reliability testing.

Algorithms mean little without a continuous stream of raw, real-world data to train them.

On the modern software-defined battlefield, algorithm accuracy shapes survival. If code is king, then raw data is the electricity that powers the throne. To feed this infrastructure, Brave1 functions less like a traditional defense bureau and more like a colossal combat data factory. Every hour of flight telemetry, electronic warfare logs, and automated targeting footage flows continuously from the battlefield into secure engineering nodes, giving developers a steady stream of real-world data.

Together, this creates a continuous machine learning (ML) pipeline, with each mission generating new data for the next software update. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, over 100 Ukrainian companies are training AI models using the Brave1 Dataroom. At its core is a secure repository that gives developers access to structured visual and thermal data on aerial threats, all captured under real battlefield conditions.

On top of that, as highlighted by The New York Times, Ukraine has opened access to millions of drone videos and extensive battlefield telemetry, allowing both domestic developers and allied partners to train and refine new technologies using real data.

The sheer volume of this dataset is staggering. DefenseScoop reports that more than half a million hours of battlefield footage are being used to train and refine AI target-recognition algorithms. Brave1's AI models are trained on conditions that are almost impossible to recreate in a laboratory.

While Western commercial tech labs are forced to train terminal guidance AI on clean, synthetic data simulations, Brave1 developers feed their convolutional neural networks a steady diet of gritty, real footage with battlefield smoke, physical camouflage, and chaotic weather conditions. This massive collection of battlefield data helps train AI models to identify armored movements, track targets through dense terrain, and maintain navigation even when GPS signals and communications links are disrupted.

However, trying to turn the battlespace into a living supercomputer comes with severe physical constraints. The long-term objective is the deployment of automated systems that can guide hardware to targets without a human pilot or continuous communications link.

Outside the front line, running sophisticated computer vision systems means relying on massive power-hungry cloud data centers or stacks of high-end enterprise GPUs. On the battlefield, we don't have that luxury. Tech developers must shrink these massive AI models into something small enough to run on low-power, edge-computing chips and clamped onto lightweight platforms operating at the front line.

Active combat zone is the supreme stress test for AI. Models must swap complexity for raw survival, learning to work with blurry cameras, damaged sensors, and broken connections. The smartest system on paper is useless if it stops working the second the electronic environment gets ugly.

This centralized intelligence advantage doubles as a single point of failure. A repository with battlefield datasets, AI models, and software configurations from numerous defense companies is an awfully attractive target for cyber adversaries. Protecting that ecosystem demands strict zero-trust security, as a single slip-up can expose the entire network.

To take humans out of danger fields, developers are looking past basic drones to deploy agile, multi-terrain robotic platforms.

Brave1's latest frontier is humanoid robotics. By launching a dedicated grant competition, Brave1 has formally established armed bipedal robots as their own defense technology vertical. The mission is to create near-human machines that can traverse trenches, transport supplies, and clear high-risk zones while keeping troops out of harm's way.

However, early tactical edge trials suggest that Hollywood-style humanoid robots remain a long way from battlefield reality. Prototypes struggled to carry more than 20 kilograms, offered slim protection against severe weather, and saw battery levels bleed out rapidly during demanding missions. While tech labs design robots to shuffle across flat factory floors, real combat carries an unstructured nightmare of mud, debris, and steep ditches.

In contrast, low-profile wheeled and tracked UGVs have already completed more than 50,000 frontline logistics missions, offering a cheaper and sturdier alternative. To survive the field, tech developers have chosen simplicity over sophistication.

Building AI for the battlefield requires abandoning many of the assumptions of traditional software engineering. In a traditional clean lab tech stack, AI models rely on high-performance cloud infrastructure and high-quality data streams. On the front line, software must be streamlined to run locally on low-cost edge-computing chips clamped onto lightweight, plastic platforms.

This optimization is non-negotiable when looking at the sheer volume of hardware hitting the production line. In fact, the scale is so massive now that Ukraine's defense production has hit a staggering 10 million drones annually, with plans to double that to 20 million. When building at this unprecedented multi-million-unit scale, your code must be lightweight enough to run smoothly on millions of cheap, disposable devices.

Meanwhile, developers must build software that persists through blurred imagery, glitchy sensors, and dead air. A model that depends on perfect data or constant network connectivity can quickly become useless once it leaves the lab.

Ultimately, Silicon Valley can continue building software for data centers, but the battlefield must have software built for sheer survival.

One of the top technical hurdles for humanoid robots isn't mobility but maintaining stable communications. Near the ground, radio signals are weakened by terrain, vegetation, and other obstacles. For a simple, two-legged platform, however, even a slight interruption can disrupt its balance, causing the entire machine to collapse.

So, what's the solution? Not building a better radio tower in the middle of a battlefield, but moving decision-making closer to it. That’s why Brave1 is pushing deterministic, edge-computing autonomy.

If the command link is lost, onboard AI instantly takes over. Using local computer vision, the system can navigate, avoid obstacles, and continue its mission without relying on GPS or a live operator link.

Modern electronic warfare isn't about broadcasting the strongest signal. In fact, that would be a good way to hang a giant "shoot here" sign over your own position.

Dating back to the Cold War and the post-conflict era, electronic warfare relied on powerful vehicle-mounted jammers that flooded broad sections of the radio spectrum. In contemporary conflicts, those high-emission systems have become increasingly vulnerable, as their massive radio frequency (RF) emissions can reveal their coordinates to enemy sensors and radar-seeking weapons. Rather than flooding the airwaves with raw power, modern electronic warfare depends on compact, software-driven systems that can adapt swiftly while remaining difficult to detect.

Through Brave1, developers are shifting toward compact, trench-level electronic warfare systems. Instead of constantly broadcasting powerful radio signals, these software-defined radio (SDR) platforms silently monitor the local spectrum for hostile activity. As soon as they detect an incoming threat, they transmit a brief, targeted jamming burst on the specific frequency being used, disrupting the attack while remaining hidden.

By taking manufacturing out of rigid defense factories, Brave1’s ecosystem has turned local tech talent into frontline defense developers.

The real breakthrough isn't all about tech - it’s fundamentally human. Instead of relying exclusively on career defense engineers, Brave1’s ecosystem draws talent from across the commercial technology sector. Software developers, UX designers, data engineers, and automation experts are applying the same skills used to build consumer apps and cloud platforms to next-generation defense technology. This subversive talent shift is bringing commercial software thinking into a field that has traditionally been shaped by slow, hardware-driven development cycles.

Now, a team that previously spent months fine-tuning logistics for a commercial delivery app can shift to building software layers that coordinate autonomous drone fleets in a matter of weeks. This talent shift is opening the door for a new generation of software engineers to reshape how defense technology is built, not just what gets built.

Yet, bringing commercial software talent into defense creates a whole new set of engineering challenges. Silicon Valley coders may still be new to physical hardware constraints, extreme environmental stress factors, or advanced ballistic mathematics.

Overcoming this challenge requires continuous collaboration between two different worlds: the software developers building the systems and the frontline experts testing them in the heat of battle.

The old-school defense factories are a tempting target: a single structure, a single strike, and systemic collapse. To protect production from long-range missile strikes, Ukraine had to move away from that factory model. Now, production has been broken apart into a distributed network of smaller facilities operating across the country. Despite their digital connectivity, these workshops function more like a peer-to-peer network than a traditional industrial empire.

The main strength of this model is its robust resilience against single points of failure. While a precision strike can damage individual production hubs, it can’t cause a cascading collapse across the whole network. Like with a digital ecosystem, production simply reroutes around broken nodes.

Still, the primary challenge remains as clear - standardizing such networks is harder than standardizing factories. Maintaining consistent quality control across hundreds of small-scale workshops calls for ongoing supervision, as even minor discrepancies in suppliers, parts, or production techniques can cause unexpected failures in the field. What performs perfectly on a test bench in Kyiv might fail during deployment simply because a single workshop used a slightly different batch of soldering wire.

To keep this under control, the Brave1 ecosystem must rely on constant monitoring and software-based diagnostics capable of scanning the whole network and flagging issues before things start to break.

The real breakthrough is not simply that Brave1 opens the market to more competitors, but that it changes the very mechanism of how defense technology evolves. Borrowing from the world of open-source software, the platform treats each tech improvement as shared building blocks that can be refined, adapted, and deployed across the wider network.

Code, 3D designs, and hardware fixes become part of a shared, ever-evolving knowledgebase rather than closely guarded company assets. So, if one team tweaks a flight controller, upgrades a component, or finds a better way to build, that progress is instantly shared and used by everyone across the ecosystem.

This approach also changes the ways Ukraine studies and replicates enemy technology. In mid-June 2026, the Ministry of Defense launched the TrophyLab platform, a secure platform built to study and catalog captured Russian military equipment. Through it, approved international partners, defense organizations, and contractors can access technical documentation, electronic warfare vulnerability reports, and telemetry analysis for over 115 captured weapons.

Instead of letting captured weapons gather dust as classified secrets, TrophyLab turns them into an open sandbox for building new defenses together. On the other hand, moving this fast can also scale up systemic errors. A flawed software update, compromised dependency, or hidden vulnerability in a shared repository could spread across multiple platforms before developers spot the problem.

In an open, fast-paced network, the real battle isn't just building cooler tech but proving that every single update is completely secure.

Before code can even expect to rewrite the rules of modern warfare, it must first break through decades of slow, legacy bureaucracy.

Beyond the battlefield, software is also reshaping defense bureaucracy. Many Western procurement systems are crippled by years-long bottlenecks and constrained by rigid rules originally drafted for industrial-era hardware like warships, fighter jets, and military bases. While this framework makes sense for concrete and steel, it struggles to keep pace with software that evolves from week to week.

By the time an agency reviews a tech requirement, writes a request, and clears legal review, the tech landscape has already shifted. This rigid setup lets legacy, prime contractors dominate simply because they possess the paperwork army, not because they build the best software. The downside to this stability is a systemic delay in sending state-of-the-art commercial tech to the field, which widens the innovation gap between the military and private tech markets.

Brave1’s flexible, software-first approach stands in stark contrast to old bureaucracy. Borrowing from the workflow of a technology startup, Brave1 is designed to evaluate ideas swiftly, fund promising prototypes, and connect developers directly with the front lines. The focus shifts from predicting tomorrow's battlefield to adapting to it as it changes.

Recognizing these bureaucratic bottlenecks, venture capital has begun flowing into defense technology at a breakneck speed. For decades, the math for defense tech simply didn't work for private capital, suppressed by sluggish procurement cycles, multi-year product runways, and heavy ethical baggage. In today's markets, the rise of adaptive, software-driven defense companies is changing that perception, turning the defense tech industry into one of the fastest-growing areas of deep-tech investment.

In line with this trend, Germany has also begun rethinking how it funds defense innovation. As reported by Reuters, Berlin is deploying a new state-backed investment vehicle to inject capital directly into defense startups. The objective is to de-risk defense innovation while bypassing agonizingly slow acquisition cycles.

Private investors are now backing startups building everything from AI-powered software to edge computing hardware to next-gen autonomous systems. Increased venture backing allows smaller companies to fast-track their initial product deployment. They can perfect new technologies without relying on slow legacy defense acquisition pipelines.

Yet market forces do not always align with military priorities. Traditional private capital prioritizes high-velocity software growth and massive markets. Meanwhile, defense forces require rugged, custom-built hardware built for niche military needs - a tech stack with zero civilian upside. The result? Well, vital, battlefield-ready technology often gets sidelined in favor of whatever scales fastest.

To bridge the gap between fast-moving tech startups and rigid military institutions, the ecosystem has shifted, with nations now turning to formal bilateral frameworks. Ukraine’s new Brave International framework bridges this financial gap with over €100 million in joint funding. This allows agile international startups to bypass slow procurement and fast-track their tech directly to the battlefield. Under this blueprint, Ukraine and its partners share costs via a 50/50 funding split. Joint, parity-based expert boards review applications to scale up sister programs like UNITE Brave NATO, Brave Norway, and Brave Lithuania.

Brave France is the first major spin-off to go live under this playbook. Finalized at the Eurosatory defense exhibition, the Brave France Bilateral Grant Program unlocks a €20 million fund built specifically to bypass bureaucratic procurement bottlenecks. This pipeline hands out €1 million per project to de-risk co-developed missile tech, robotics, and next-gen air defense systems. The first call for projects goes live this September.

At the same time, Berlin is spinning up its own Brave Germany track to tackle critical front-line hardware shortages. Signed in Kyiv, the Brave Germany agreement pumps direct capital into specialized battlefield hardware such as laser systems and secure tactical communications. Most notably, the framework fast-tracks the production of 5,000 AI-powered strike drones. Crucially, the pact covers the co-development of strategic long-range systems capable of reaching up to 1,500 kilometers, allowing allied tech companies to validate their prototypes directly in live combat via the "Test in Ukraine" loop.

Before a software update can rewrite the rules of combat, it must first change the core economic equation of the modern battlefield.

To understand why software-defined warfare is reshaping modern conflict, we have to start with the economics. For decades, conventional military strategy was created under the assumption that a sophisticated battle tank required an equally sophisticated (and expensive) anti-tank missile system. It was a high-stakes arena where both offense and defense demanded multi-million-dollar investments to get their hardware to the starting line.

Ecosystems like Brave1 have torn up the traditional defense playbook. By weaponizing cheap commercial tech, they give agile startups the ability to neutralize multimillion-dollar systems at a fraction of the cost. Today, a standard off-the-shelf racing drone can be modified with a basic 3D-printed payload mechanism and a $50 onboard AI microchip, and all of it costs around $500 to assemble. Yet, guided by smart edge-computing algorithms that throwaway piece of plastic gets the precision to seek and destroy an armored vehicle worth as much as $5 million.

This staggering economic asymmetry flips the logic of attrition warfare on its head. Why spend millions on heavy, legacy hardware when low-cost, disposable tech can destroy it too?

Well, this hyper-cheap approach has its own structural headaches. Sourced from commercial supply chains rather than defense contractors, these tools sacrifice military-grade certification and risk resembling an early-stage Kickstarter project. A cheap capacitor might tap out the moment it encounters a brisk autumn breeze. In this arena, you trade hardware perfection for the pure math of a statistical zerg rush.

Traditional defense giants operate much like bureaucratic mega-corporations, obsessing over shareholder returns and safeguarding their proprietary tech. Their business models are built around stability and product lifecycles that stretch over decades.

Wartime innovation ecosystems like Brave1 trade corporate profit targets for immediate frontline deployment. This type of urgency rewards rapid prototyping and open-source collaboration rather than multi-year development loops and locked software.

While this agile approach speeds up innovation during trying times, it leaves deep-tech startups with seriously thin financial safety nets. When the immediate crisis cools down, many of these narrow-margin startups may struggle to keep their engineers paid or scale into mature defense companies.

The massive ripples from Brave1 reach far beyond the mud of the front line, handing a brand new playbook to deep-tech manufacturers worldwide. By proving that you can build, patch, and scale seriously complex physical networks using decentralized, open-source code, this pipeline has cracked the code on absolute agility. It proves that during a chaotic crisis, the most lethal asset in your toolkit isn’t a shiny yet rigid hardware product but an adaptable software infrastructure that can change on a dime.

The future of enterprise technology is no longer trapped within the squeaky clean labs of isolated corporate ivory towers. The companies that are going to rule the next decade, whether building next-gen defense hardware or streamlining global shipping routes, will be those that successfully mimic this framework. They will swap stiff, top-down corporate hierarchies for open developer portals and trade sluggish multi-month updates for continuous 72-hour coding sprints. To put it simply, they will realize that raw, real-world data will always stomp all over laboratory theory.

Now, we can officially say goodbye to old-school development manuals and endless peacetime planning committees. Tomorrow's winning companies will stop treating business like a catalog of static products, choosing instead to run their operations like a living software ecosystem that evolves the second the environment shifts.

Brave1 moves at hyper-speed, spinning up new grant tracks and global pipelines in weeks instead of years. Thankfully, this explosive evolution is heavily documented, so we can track Ukraine's defense tech disruption in real time:

If you are tracking Brave1, watch these channels:

• Brave1 Official Portal: The primary hub for active grant tracks, tech challenges, and developer registration.
• Ministry of Digital Transformation: The best source for the high-level government policies shaping the dual-use tech ecosystem.
• Brave1 on X (Twitter): The fastest source for frontline product launches, hackathons, and real-time field test videos.
• Brave1 Market: The "app store for the military" marketplace where frontline units buy verified hardware directly from builders.
• TrophyLab Portal: A secure research platform used by allied engineers to analyze captured hardware and electronic warfare data.

In the end, this brand-new blueprint proves that the old corporate playbook is as good as dead, and global tech firms must learn to move fast or get left behind.

• Nvidia and Microsoft lead the list of founder members of the Open Secure AI Alliance
• AI, financial services, tech companies, and other organizations with developing AI services have joined the alliance
• Notable exceptions include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google

Nvidia has confirmed its membership of the new Open Secure AI Alliance, a collective of industry-leading tech, financial, and AI businesses working in collaboration to ensure openness in the AI industry. Curiously, however, while Microsoft and OpenClaw are among the founding members, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are not.

Inspired by the open source movement and the Linux Foundation-led Akrites AI cyber threat response initiative, the Open Secure AI Alliance aims to use open technologies to disclose and remediate vulnerabilities.

Citing the recent Hugging Face incident, where closed AI tools prevented full investigation of the event, the Open Secure AI Alliance founding announcement underlines the importance of open models, highlighting how cybersecurity is one of the main beneficiaries of open source software.

A sizeable group of recognizable companies are involved with the Open Secure AI Alliance, including OpenClaw, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, IBM, Linux Foundation and Hugging Face.

Notable from this list are Google and Palantir, and of course OpenAI, which was responsible for the Hugging Face attack. Given that this event occurred during a cybersecurity benchmark test and OpenAI’s model conducted a wholly automated attack on Hugging Face’s servers, it serves as an important demonstration of what is at risk from closed source models in the AI world.

“When defenders cannot inspect, adapt and run advanced AI on their own infrastructure, their ability to respond is constrained at exactly the moment speed matters most,” states the Open Secure AI Alliance, which emphasizes its mission: “to ensure defenders everywhere have open, frontier tools they can trust and control.”

OpenAI’s lack of openness in dealing with the incident, and Hugging Face’s initial difficulties in analyzing the intrusion due to closed source models, really underline the importance of this new alliance.

The argument concerning open and closed software models isn’t likely to end any time soon, but the Open Secure AI Alliance certainly makes a strong point for open models. Yes, they can be a risk that can be modified or misused, but those risks exist within closed systems.

So, the alliance’s view is to give defenders the tools to deal with threats, rather than blocking those tools. Decades of cybersecurity research have shown, after all, that the best option is collaboration and testing – or, as the Open Secure AI Alliance states “the safer path is the one that gives more defenders the ability to test, verify and strengthen the systems on which society relies.”

Given OpenAI’s role in the Hugging Face incident, its absence makes sense – but what about Google and Anthropic? At a time when corporate collaboration is driving development of new technologies within tight standards (for example, the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s work with Matter and Aliro), it seems as though the Open Secure AI Alliance has the right idea.

I didn't think a second screen would change how I work until I actually used one. For the last few weeks, I've been running the Plugable USB-C Portable Monitor alongside my laptop, and it's quietly become the accessory I'm most annoyed to leave at home.

Not because it's flashy, but because it solves a problem I'd stopped noticing I had: everything I do, from research with three tabs open to editing a draft while a spreadsheet sits in the background, is easier with two screens instead of one.

The real benefit of a second monitor isn't extra pixels—it's just relief from overlapping windows. With the Plugable next to my laptop, Slack and email stay parked on one screen while I focus on the other. I tab-switch way less, which keeps me from constantly losing my spot throughout the workday.

It's a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS screen, 60Hz, anti-glare coating. Nothing exotic on paper. But I've had it wedged at some awkward angles trying to fit it on cramped desks, and it still looks right, no washed-out colors like some of the cheaper portable screens I've tried. 300 nits of brightness.

That's fine at a desk or on the couch, but take it outside on a sunny afternoon and you'll be squinting at your own reflection. Didn't expect this part: it does HDCP, so Netflix and the rest just work instead of giving you that annoying black screen some portable monitors throw when they hit copy protection.

The Plugable USB-C Portable Monitor is a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display built to turn any laptop into a two-screen setup with a single cable. All told, it's a straightforward way to add a real second display anywhere you can find a laptop and an outlet.

Read our Plugable Portable Monitor review. View Deal

The setup is genuinely just one cable. Plug the included USB-C cable from the monitor into a video-capable USB-C port on your laptop, and the screen lights up immediately- no drivers, no software to install.

That single cable also carries power in the other direction: the monitor can pass through up to 100W from a connected charger, using 15W to run itself and sending the remaining 85W on to power your laptop. In practice, that means I run one cable from the wall to the monitor, and one cable from the monitor to my laptop, and both the screen and my laptop's battery are taken care of at once.

The important caveat, and the one thing that catches people out, is that this only works over a USB-C port that actually supports video, meaning DisplayPort Alt Mode, USB4, or Thunderbolt. Plenty of laptops have USB-C ports that only handle charging or data, and plugging into one of those gets you a black screen and nothing else.

It's worth checking your specific laptop's port specs before assuming any USB-C port will do the job. The same logic applies to cables: the one included with the monitor handles video, power, and data over its 3.3-foot length.

But if you want a longer cable for a more comfortable desk setup, you need one explicitly rated for DP Alt Mode plus Power Delivery plus at least 10Gbps data, since plenty of USB-C cables that look identical are charge-only and won't carry a picture at all.

This is the part I didn't expect to actually use. Beyond the main port handling power and video, there are two more 10Gbps USB-C ports built right into the monitor. So when I need to pull footage off an external SSD, I just plug it into the monitor instead of digging out a separate hub or hogging a port on the laptop itself.

It also isn't limited to laptops. The monitor works with USB-C iPads and Android phones with video-capable ports, and with iPhone 15 and later. The one thing to know is that most phones and tablets can't power the screen on their own.

So, if you're driving the monitor from a phone, you'll want a USB-C power adapter connected to the monitor's pass-through port to keep both the screen and your device running smoothly. Laptops, by contrast, can usually power it without any extra adapter.

It weighs 1.85 pounds, measures roughly an inch thick, and the protective cover doubles as a stand — making it simple to pack and deploy anywhere. Color accuracy and refresh rate aren't suited for heavy media work or gaming, but as an everyday secondary display for work, it does the job effortlessly.

I went into this expecting a nice-to-have and ended up with something I genuinely plan trips around. That's a weird thing to say about a monitor, but here we are. It's not going to wow anyone with specs, and it's definitely not the display you want if your job involves color grading or fast-paced gaming.

What it's actually good at is the boring stuff: giving you a second screen with zero setup friction, wherever you happen to be working that day. Hotel desk, kitchen table, coffee shop with one free outlet, doesn't matter. Plug in the right port, and it just works. At $199 in the US, it's not an impulse buy, but if you've ever tried to get real work done on a single 13-inch laptop screen, you already know what that's worth.

For more top-performers, see our guide to the best portable monitors we've tested.

• Meta has funded multiple natural gas power plants over the past 12 months
• The corporate renewable energy initiative RE100 includes Apple, Google, and Microsoft among its 444 members
• Meta has previously committed to running all operations on renewables by 2020

Meta has confirmed it is withdrawing from the RE100 scheme, following the news that it has funded several gas-fired power stations over the past year.

With the company leaning heavily into AI and the necessary data centers that come with such a commitment, it has opted to exit the collective of corporations planning to transition to 100% renewable energy, overturning a public commitment made in 2020.

While RE100 has many other members, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Meta’s confirmation of a move away from the group indicates that it doesn’t see an immediate solution to the power challenges posed by data centers.

The RE100 initiative is led by the Climate Group, a non-profit with former UK prime minister Tony Blair named as a co-founder. Membership of the project gives organizations access to policy support and technical advice to support plans for moving to a 100% renewable energy footprint.

When quizzed, a Climate Group spokesperson responded: “After several in-depth conversations between Meta and Climate Group, Meta has withdrawn from the RE100 initiative, as it is no longer able to meet the technical criteria due to investments made in new gas power.”

Meta isn’t alone in looking beyond the renewable options for supplying power to its data centers. Its former RE100 co-members Google and Microsoft have both recently invested in fossil fuel projects. However, those companies both appear to have hedged their bets more widely, with Microsoft aiming for hourly energy matching (where fossil use is matched by renewable energy) and Google employing a 100-hour battery in a collaboration with Form Energy.

Moving away from commitments to renewables in order to provide data centers with the level of energy they need in the AI era is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

Modern data centers require power for processing, for cooling, and for backup, and this requires a level of power that traditionally has only been seen in heavy manufacturing industries. The infrastructure currently available for renewable sources of power does not widely account for supply issues, battery systems are underdeveloped, and nuclear takes years to commission.

Meta’s support for gas power includes partnering with Entergy Corp in building seven plants in Louisiana in order to deliver over 5GW for its Richland Parish data center.

Conversely, gas-powered electricity is faster to set up, is a known quantity, and is cleaner than coal. Until infrastructure catches up with the demands from data centers, more withdrawals and fudges on previous green energy commitments from big tech should not be ruled out.

It’s probably fair to say Meta is facing serious public backlash to its AI glasses.

Musician Lorde took time at a recent concert to tell her audience, “Don’t get the glasses,” many online are branding them “pervert glasses,” and activist group Everyone Hates Elon has put up spoof adverts for the glasses featuring Jeffrey Epstein wearing a pair (note: the story behind a paywall).

I myself have been unsure if I’ll keep using my Meta glasses, despite their utility making them one of my favorite gadgets I’ve tested while working at TechRadar.

Meta has rebutted with new measures to combat misuse of its glasses. It recently patched its specs to prevent modders from using the camera despite disabling the recording light, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently announced harassment videos shot using Meta glasses will be banned from the platform — with some high-profile accounts already getting the boot.

Among the folks still in love with the Meta glasses, however, is my wife Izzy.

When I suggested taking a pair each with us on our recent honeymoon to Tenerife, she wasn’t convinced — despite them being our only sunglasses without my prescription lenses in them — but she wore the white-and-gold Oakley HSTN specs nearly all the time we were abroad.

I was also testing out a pair of the Ray-Ban Meta Optics styles for an upcoming review, and time and again the glasses proved themselves useful. Our trip confirmed how awesome these glasses can be when used right, and why a middle ground needs to be found to maximize privacy and utility before things get out of hand.

Of course, the primary reason to rely on Meta glasses is their built-in tech.

Whether we were lounging on a sunbed, strolling through the streets and past the beaches of Los Cristianos, or kicking back with a drink in the evening, we both loved the open-ear speakers that let us enjoy our podcast or playlist of choice without tuning out the world.

For hours on end, I enjoyed Radio 1 through BBC Sounds, while Izzy drifted between Spotify hits, and both pairs lasted a good length of time battery-wise — with touch controls making it super simple to control the tunes when needed.

The AI translations came in clutch several times as well. It offered quick advice on what phrases to use when we realized our limited selection of “Hola,” “Gracias,” and “Por favor” wouldn’t cut the mustard.

Meanwhile, Look and Ask helped Izzy decipher which of the unrecognizable shampoos and conditioners would be best for her hair after a travel mishap saw the supply we packed leak into her travel bag. The AI could read the Spanish labels to her to help identify and filter out ingredients she knows to avoid, and we ended up buying a few extra bottles of the conditioner she found to bring home after she fell in love with it.

It can't be understated how useful the smart specs are simply as sunglasses too.

My Optics pair features Transitions XTRActive lenses, transitioning fast from clear to shaded as I moved between indoor and outdoor spaces, which was super handy for someone like me who wears glasses all the time. Meanwhile, the polarized gold HSTN lenses were perfect for Izzy as she spent hours of her day baking in high-UV weather.

Thanks to the charging case, my specs rarely ran out of battery, but even when they did, I could still rely on them just fine as stylish shades.

Of course, the controversial aspect is the camera. Beyond the AI assistance, it was helpful for snapping quick photos and first-person clips for the travel vlog I’m looking to cut together.

Though whenever I went to snap a photo, I had flashes of the story about Meta contractors who claimed to have seen intimate moments captured through the specs. Shots of either of us in swimwear went nowhere near the glasses’ snapper, and I kept a careful eye on who was in the background of any shots I did take.

We were also a little worried that someone might not like us using the glasses at all in their presence, though thankfully no one took any issue with us.

These fears and considerations do create points of friction when it comes to using Meta’s glasses—or any smart glasses, for that matter. While the Facebook company is the best-known for smart eyewear right now it is far from alone, and while it's making efforts to clean up its public perception smart glasses will be tarred with the same brush if any brand steps out of line.

I also don’t think Meta’s efforts are perfect so far, at least not yet. I’d like to see more work across social and hardware platforms to root out smart glasses misuse; I believe better, more thorough privacy rules are necessary to make it crystal clear what data is and isn’t shared with Meta and its staff, and I’m not convinced I could trust it with the immense amount of data its rumored super sense feature would capture from my daily life — blunders like its Instagram AI image use plan and backtrack don’t fill me with confidence in its AI decision making.

At the same time, my week falling back in love with the Meta glasses, and my wife loving her Oakley smart specs, proves there’s something really fun and useful about the tech that I equally don’t want to see taken away or banned outright.

With other brands joining in on intelligent eyewear — recently Samsung demonstrated its own pairs at Galaxy Unpacked — it’s clear the tech industry is storming ahead, just as it has with exciting emerging technologies in the past.

I just hope a middle ground can be found, because smart specs represent a serious privacy nightmare beyond other gadgets we’ve relied on. If the tech doesn’t hold itself to account, we could see even more regulation and public backlash than we’ve seen already, and that could kill off my favorite tech sector of recent years before it has a chance to thrive.

The world of robot vacuums has come a long way. I've been testing and writing about these puck-shaped home helpers for over two years, and during that time I've watched suction specs skyrocket, bots sprout legs and pincer arms, and docks transform into formidable, self-sufficient cleaning stations. Robot vacuums are looking cleverer and more useful than ever.

I wanted to get an idea of where the industry is headed, and what the next generation of robovacs might look like. So I rounded up representatives from some of the best robot vacuum brands to get their insights — and it's clear from what they told me that this smart-home segment is going to get even bigger… and even weirder.

The obvious place to start is with the cleaning itself, and there's one point that my interviewees all agreed on: it's no longer all about the suction specs. "Customers are looking beyond headline suction figures and realizing the performance of robot vacuums is the combination of a lot of features," says Michael Meng, President of Dreame's robot vacuum division.

Nowadays, customers are looking for better cleaning, rather than just outright power, and robovac brands have been happy to oblige, with all manner of inventive solutions.

Customers are looking beyond headline suction figures and realizing performance is the combination of a lot of features

Michael Meng, Dreame

Roborock, for example, has been working hard to make sure no corner goes uncleaned. "We see a massive push for ultra-slim designs that don't sacrifice power," says Ricky Ma, general manager for Europe and America. "People want a device that can finally clean the forgotten spaces under low-profile furniture — couches, beds, and cabinets — where dust and allergens traditionally accumulate and remain out of reach for bulkier robots."

The brand's newest bots use an innovative navigation system that doesn't require a raised puck to sit on the top surface. Roborock — alongside Dreame — has also experimented with pucks that can extend or retract, periscope-style, depending on the vertical height available.

Mopping functions have been the subject of much attention, too. Wet cleaning is nothing new — in fact, these days you might struggle to find a model that can't mop — but I've been seeing an increasing preference for roller mops rather than flat mop pads (either of the D-shaped or disc-shaped variety). The benefit of a cylindrical mop is that the dirty water can be scraped off, and clean water added in, as the robovac goes about its mopping business.

"One development that particularly excites me is the introduction of roller mop technology, which helps ensure floors are continuously cleaned with a fresh mop surface," says Reena Patel,

Floorcare Category Manager at iRobot, the brand behind Roomba.

Faraz Mehdi, managing director at Eufy, agrees. "Users increasingly care about whether the robot is actually cleaning with a clean mop and truly removing dirty water, rather than just spreading mess around," he says. "Real-time self-cleaning mopping makes a meaningful difference."

Eufy is also looking into improving filtration. In manual vacuums, Dyson has popularized multi-step filtration systems, which make use of cyclones to separate waste particles of different sizes. However, that hasn't really carried over into robot vacuums, which typically have a much more basic setup.

Eufy's AeroTurbo filter setup is significantly more complex. "We’re interested in airflow and dust-separation systems that help deliver more sustained suction performance, especially in homes with carpets and hair," explains Faraz. "One of the biggest pain points in the category is that cleaning performance can fall over time as filters clog, so technologies like multi-cyclone separation matter because they improve long-term consistency."

Our robotic arm design folds and unfolds in a way that mimics natural arm movement

Michael Meng, Dreame

Dreame has made particular strides in innovations focused on getting right into edges and corners. "No matter how powerful a robot vacuum is, dust and debris collect in corners and along edges where brushes simply can't reach. It's one of those problems that sounds minor until you actually look at how dirty those corners get," says Michael Meng.

Its newest bot — the X60 Pro Ultra Complete — has 'UltraExtend technology', which enables the mop pad to kick out up to 7 inches / 18cm from the robot body, and the side sweeper brush to unfurl, E.T.-style, to reach up to 4.7 inches / 12cm.

The design is inspired by human limbs. "When you extend your forearm, your reach increases significantly," Meng explains. "We applied that same principle to our robotic arm design — engineering it to fold and unfold in a way that mimics natural arm movement."

Intertwined with cleaning performance is battery function. "A robot vacuum that runs out of power mid-clean is more frustration than solution," says Meng. "Consumers with larger homes or open-plan layouts need a robot that can complete a full clean in a single charge — or intelligently return to dock, recharge and resume exactly where it left off. Battery efficiency, combined with smart charging and resume functionality, has become a key purchasing consideration for households of all sizes."

Even with all the performance advancements, it's still the case that a robot vacuum-mop won't clean as well as a manual vacuum could. Robovacs are winning on convenience, but not on cleaning power. The long-term aim is to catch up. "The first step is to close the cleaning performance gap — reaching, and eventually surpassing, handheld devices," says Faraz from Eufy.

The first step is to close the cleaning performance gap — reaching, and eventually surpassing, handheld devices

Faraz Mehdi, Eufy

Longer-term, he sees things progressing to a point where robot vacuums can tackle not just vacuuming and straightforward mopping, but a wider range of cleaning demands.

"Technologies like roller mopping, steam cleaning, and multi-cyclone systems are maturing," he points out. "In the next five to 10 years, robot vacuums will take on true deep-cleaning capabilities — thorough carpet washing, high-temperature steam disinfection and floor sanitization. The kinds of tasks that currently require dedicated equipment or professional services will gradually fall within the robot vacuum remit."

The trump card robot vacuums already hold over manual cleaning appliances is that they take care of the job on their own. It makes sense, then, that continuing to improve automation is a key focus for all the brands I spoke to.

"In the 12 years we have existed as a company, trends have shifted constantly," says Roborock's Ricky Ma. "Currently, the primary trend is 'zero-maintenance and zero human intervention', where users expect a robot to not only vacuum and mop but also self-clean, self-dry, and navigate complex environments without human intervention."

"The biggest challenge is making advanced automation feel completely effortless," adds SwitchBot's co-founder Richard Mou. "Our goal is to reduce the number of times users need to think about their robot."

We've seen consumers become more willing to purchase premium robot vacuums to deliver a genuinely hands-off experience

Reena Patel, iRobot

iRobot's Reena Patel points out that this focus on autonomy is reflected in iRobot's sales patterns. "We've seen consumers become more willing to purchase premium robot vacuums to deliver a genuinely hands-off experience," she tells me. "Consumers are increasingly prioritizing features that save time, such as self-emptying and self-cleaning docks, advanced mopping systems, and intelligent obstacle avoidance."

A big part of the equation when it comes to true autonomy is maintenance. "People increasingly expect higher automation," says Eufy's Faraz Mehdi. "Features like auto-emptying, mop washing, drying, and anti-tangle systems are becoming much more important because users want a robot that genuinely reduces housework, rather than creating a new maintenance routine."

The ultimate aim is robovacs that don't require you to get involved at all — as Mehdi puts it, "zero manual intervention, end to end", including "full-chain self-maintenance, so the user never needs to maintain the machine itself."

Self-maintenance is one thing, but for a robot to operate without a human chaperone present, it also needs reliable navigation and object avoidance skills. These are essential if it's not going to get lost, stuck or tangled in something.

"Accurate navigation is the foundation of an effective robot vacuum," says Dreame's Michael Meng. "Advanced LiDAR and AI-powered object recognition allow modern robots to avoid obstacles in real time.... Smart robots should not be trapped or stuck easily, so they can work on their own without users to rescue them."

I've never met a robot vacuum that's not desperate to jam itself up by chowing down on any charge cable it can get its wheels on, so here I'd like to put in a personal appeal for more focus on low-level object avoidance.

When it comes to robot vacuums making their way around unassisted, the ultimate hurdle to overcome is stairs. The more premium of the current fleet of bots tend to come kitted out with something akin to small stilts, which raise up the body of the vacuum and enable it to maneuver over tall room thresholds.

However, traversing an actual flight of stairs requires an altogether more involved approach. "It sounds like a simple problem, but for anyone living in a multi-story home, it's one of the biggest limitations of robot vacuums today," Meng notes.

As far as I'm aware, there are just three brands who have offered some kind of stair climbing solution, and they're all represented in my pack of interviewees. For Dreame, it's the Cyber X — essentially a stair-climbing pocket into which a robot vacuum can dock when it needs to change floors. Think of it like a stairlift for robovacs. Eufy's MarsWalker takes a similar approach.

Roborock's Saros Rover is rather different, with its two long, spindly legs that enable it to scale not just steps but all kinds of uneven terrain. Ricky Ma sees it as a major breakthrough in bots that don't require human intervention. "The future of this category is exciting and we can't wait to show everyone what we have to offer," he enthuses. I saw the Rover in action at CES 2026, and it was a complete departure from any robot vacuum I've seen before. At that point, it was still at prototype stage — I'll be watching with interest to see how things develop.

So far, I've been focusing on developments that have already started to take root. But what about the longer term? I asked my interviewees their predictions for what the robovac market might look like in five to 10 years' time, and they had some intriguing answers.

Eufy believes autonomous decision-making is going to change the game. "Robot vacuums will reach a level of intelligence where they can genuinely understand the home environment, identify different types of dirt, and autonomously choose the optimal cleaning strategy," Faraz Mehdi predicts.

Roborock is planning along similar lines. "Robovacs are rapidly shifting from an appliance to a smart cleaning partner. The most important shift will be greater physical intelligence," says Ricky Ma. "The ultimate goal is to build an intelligent cleaning partner that can spot the need to clean even before the user has time to ask the product to do so."

Further to this, a few of the execs I interviewed envision about a future where robot vacuums are no longer lone rangers, but work seamlessly alongside other smart appliances.

"Rather than operating as standalone devices, they will become increasingly connected with the wider smart home ecosystem, working more intelligently with other devices," says Dreame's Michael Meng.

Meng also sees a future where robovacs are far from the only autonomous helpers in the home. "While the familiar robot vacuum will remain an important form factor, its capabilities will extend well beyond floor cleaning," he says. "Advances in technologies such as robotic manipulation and embodied AI will enable these robots to interact more naturally with their surroundings and take on a broader range of household tasks."

Robovacs are rapidly shifting from an appliance to a smart cleaning partner

Ricky Ma, Roborock

SwitchBot's Richard Mou has an even more fully formed vision for the future: "I think we'll stop thinking about robovacs as a standalone category and instead see them as part of a broader family of home robots," he tells me.

"As embodied AI and humanoid robotics continue to mature, robot vacuums will contribute proven capabilities like autonomous navigation, environmental perception, and home mapping, while future humanoid robots build on those foundations to take on a much wider range of household tasks. At SwitchBot, that's exactly how we see the future — creating intelligent home robots that work together as one ecosystem rather than isolated devices."

Prepare yourself for the home robot takeover — and for an even cleaner home.

• The BRRRRT Act seeks to keep at least 126 A-10s operational
• Iran operations revive debate over the A-10's military future
• Future A-10 retirements face stricter certification requirements under new legislation

A proposed House bill requires the US Air Force to retain at least 126 A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthogs, reversing plans to retire much of the nearly 50-year-old attack aircraft fleet.

The legislation follows renewed attention on the aircraft after its reported involvement in operations linked to the recent Iran confrontation, including combat search-and-rescue missions supporting downed F-15E aircrew.

Lawmakers backing the proposal argue the aircraft should remain in service until a fully operational replacement has been certified for every mission it currently performs.

Officially named the Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt Act, the legislation uses the acronym BRRRRT.

Introduced as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, the Act takes its name from the distinctive sound produced by the A-10's 30mm Gatling gun during firing.

“The A-10 has repeatedly proven itself on the battlefield, saving American lives and delivering unmatched close air support when our troops need it most,” said Hamadeh.

“The BRRRRT Act ensures we do not retire a proven weapons system before a certified replacement exists.”

The proposal marks another chapter in a longstanding disagreement between Congress and the Air Force over the future of the Warthog fleet and its specialized missions.

The Air Force entered fiscal 2026 with 162 A-10 aircraft and sought authority to retire the entire fleet.

However, Congress rejected that proposal and instead required the service to retain at least 103 aircraft.

The BRRRRT Act would raise that minimum inventory to 126 aircraft, requiring the Air Force to halt scheduled retirements and recover additional Warthogs from storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

Following recent operational use, the Air Force announced that A-10 squadrons at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia would remain active through 2029.

The service also plans to keep Warthogs flying from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri through 2030, leaving approximately 54 aircraft assigned to three operational squadrons.

The legislation would give the Air Force 90 days after enactment to explain how maintenance, sustainment, pilot training, flight testing, and depot operations would be restored.

Earlier retirement preparations already included closing the depot maintenance line at Hill Air Force Base in February and ending the final training class for new A-10 pilots in April.

The Weapons School course at Nellis Air Force Base has also been winding down as the service continued preparing for the aircraft's planned retirement.

The proposal would also make additional retirements harder by requiring the defense secretary to certify that a replacement aircraft has entered full operational service.

That certification would also require written approval from the Army secretary, the Marine Corps commandant, and the head of U.S. Special Operations Command.

The bill also states that assigning another aircraft the close air support mission as a secondary responsibility would not qualify as a replacement.

If the BRRRRT Act does not become law, similar language could still appear in the annual defense authorization legislation that previously established the 103-aircraft minimum.

The Air Force maintains that the F-35A, F-15E, and F-16 will eventually assume the A-10's close air support and combat search-and-rescue missions.

Supporters of the BRRRRT Act argue those aircraft have not yet replaced every specialized capability performed by the Warthog.

Via Military Times