Chaos Industries Inc., the Hawthorne-based defense intelligence startup, announced on Wednesday that it acquired Virginia-based aerospace company Atropos Group.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Buying Atropos, which develops autonomous cargo aircraft, solidifies Chaos Industries’ deliberate but slow push toward becoming a vertically integrated company by attaching its sensors to autonomous transportation.
“This acquisition brings together two companies with a shared belief that the drone threat demands a fundamentally different answer,” John Tenet, Chaos Industries chief executive and co-founder, said in a statement.
As part of the acquisition, Atropos co-founder Vince Dutcavich will lead Chaos’ newly developed aerospace division. Colin Carroll, also a co-founder of Atropos, will become the new chief growth officer.
“From day one, Atropos has been driven by the belief in flexible, affordable airpower,” said Dutcavich. “Joining Chaos gives our platforms a purpose that perfectly matches that ambition, delivering a faster, more mobile, and more cost-effective approach to countering evolving threats.”
The Atropos deal marks Chaos Industries’ second acquisition, and third major capability move in less than a year. The company purchased Ziva Corp., a wireless synchronization platform, in November to update intelligence data gathered by its sensors in real time.
Combining ‘defense systems’
Founded in 2022, Chaos entered the scene with a plan to develop a variety of radars and sensors for the defense sector and has since been working to find new ways to deploy its devices. In October, it inked a partnership with Forterra to retrofit the firm’s autonomous vehicle stack with Chaos’ sensing and intelligence products.
“By combining our air defense systems with Forterra’s autonomous mobility package, we’ve delivered a capability that is greater than the sum of its parts and immediately relevant to the warfighter,” said Tenet and fellow Chaos Industries co-founder Bo Marr in a statement.
That’s what Chaos Industries plans to do with Atropos’ aircraft, which is still under development. The goal is to integrate sensors and radars into these mobile systems so they can deliver payloads, survey a new area for risks, and, in some cases, intercept threats – all without a human driver in the front seat.
“Together, we will deliver pragmatic, vertically integrated weapon systems the defense community has needed for a long time, integrating sensors, platforms, and effectors at speed and at scale,” Tenet said.
