Teradar pushes Summit sensor closer to serialization with new OEM deal

The milestone positions Teradar for further growth. The progression follows a familiar automotive industry pipeline: Development work and paid evaluations lead naturally toward requests for information (RFIs), which open the door to formal requests for proposals (RFPs) for serialized vehicle production.

Teradar’s mass-producible, low-cost B1 sensor is scheduled to be ready for demonstration at CES 2027.

Defense Applications Gain Traction

The automotive opportunity is only part of Teradar’s strategy. The company has secured multiple Army contracts focused on perception for military vehicles. For the military, autonomy applications include detecting obstacles such as barbed wire and determining whether a vehicle stays on the road.

The battlefield angle is where terahertz technology’s stealth advantage becomes particularly compelling. Ukraine’s drone warfare evolution has created urgent demand for sensors that can locate slow-moving or low-cost drones with millimeter-level precision without emitting a detectable signature.

“The actual taking down of the drone isn’t that hard. It’s knowing where it is at a millimeter level and the velocity of it — that’s really hard,” Carey said. “And so that’s what we’re able to provide.”

Lidar’s weakness on the battlefield is its signature. An eight-watt laser broadcast into the sky acts like a beacon.

“It will solve picking out that one particular drone, but you’ve just let all 95 drones around know exactly where you are because it’s a piece of cake to trace it back,” Carey said.

Layered Sensing: The Multi-Spectrum Future

Terahertz technology does have trade-offs. Atmospheric absorption limits its effective range to roughly 500 meters, while radar can detect targets miles away. Carey is clear-eyed about those boundaries.

“I don’t wanna be like, we’re the sensor that replaces everything for all time,” he said. “But what our niche is — both in automotive and in defense — is that gap.”

The future lies in multi-spectrum, layered approaches that combine short-, mid- and long-range sensors with edge AI. Ships already deploy X-band and C-band radar arrays for this reason, switching between ranges as threats materialize.

“You build it in as a layered defense using the best of all the sensors together,” Carey said.

With more than $100 million in backing secured last November and multiple OEMs expressing interest, Teradar’s next objective is straightforward: Win a vehicle program.