FORT Robotics SPAC Merger: $500M Deal With Newbury Street II

What FORT Robotics Actually Builds

FORT Robotics sells safety and security infrastructure that autonomous machines share, not a robot of its own. The company calls this the Trust Layer, a combination of hardware, firmware, and cloud software that lets robots from different manufacturers stop safely, communicate status, and hand off control to a human when something goes wrong.

That interoperability is the actual product. A warehouse or job site rarely runs one robot brand; it runs a mix of AMRs, forklifts, drones, and increasingly humanoids from different vendors, and each one historically shipped with its own proprietary safety system that could not talk to the others. FORT's pitch is a shared safety layer that sits underneath all of them, so a wireless e-stop or a remote shutdown command works the same way regardless of which company built the machine.

The company was founded in 2018 by CEO Samuel Reeves, who spent roughly a decade building landmine-clearing robots before starting FORT. That background shaped the company's focus: safety infrastructure for machines operating in unpredictable, human-populated environments, not a single robot product line.

The core hardware is a wireless emergency-stop system: a handheld or wearable trigger that can halt a robot, forklift, or drone from a distance, independent of the machine's own software stack. That independence matters for reliability. A safety system built into a robot's main control software can fail along with that software; a separate hardware layer with its own radio link keeps working even if the robot's onboard computer freezes or crashes.

The SPAC Deal: Terms, Timing, and Who's Backing It

FORT Robotics is merging with Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company, rather than filing for a traditional IPO. The deal, announced August 18, 2026, values FORT at a $500 million pre-money equity value and a $556.6 million pro forma enterprise value, with the combined entity renamed FORT Robotics Holdings, Inc. and expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker FROB once the merger closes.

The transaction is expected to deliver roughly $201 million in gross proceeds and about $182 million in net cash to FORT's balance sheet after transaction costs, assuming minimal shareholder redemptions from the SPAC's trust account. Existing FORT shareholders are rolling 100% of their equity into the combined company and are projected to retain a 67% majority ownership stake, a structure that keeps founder and early-investor control largely intact through the transition to public markets.

A roughly $31 million private-placement commitment (PIPE and non-redemption agreements) is backing the deal, with investors including Tiger Global, Prologis Ventures, and Mark Cuban, who has backed the company through Mark Cuban Companies since an earlier funding round. The merger still needs Newbury Street II shareholder approval and SEC review of the registration statement before it closes, with both companies targeting the fourth quarter of 2026.

FORT Robotics' Growth Numbers Behind the Valuation

FORT reported 62% year-over-year revenue growth in 2025, the headline growth figure behind the deal's valuation. Gross margins held at 66% in 2025, down slightly from 70% in 2024, while operating expenses grew only 19% over the same period, a gap that points to the business scaling faster than its cost base.

The company says it serves more than 600 customers across roughly 19,500 deployed safety units, spanning warehousing, transportation, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, mining, energy, and defense. Named customers reported in coverage of the deal include Agility Robotics, Google DeepMind, Zoox, Textron, and DoorDash, though a customer being named in a press release is not the same as a large, revenue-significant deployment.

Two figures matter more than the customer logos for judging how durable that growth is. FORT reports 91% growth among accounts spending over $100,000 a year, and no single customer accounted for more than 9% of 2025 revenue, both signs the business is not dependent on one anchor client renewing.

Why Robot Safety Infrastructure Is Becoming Its Own Category

FORT Robotics is positioning itself as the first company to go public specifically around safety infrastructure for autonomous machines, rather than around a robot itself. The Trust Layer holds Safety Integrity Level 3 certification under IEC 61508, an industrial functional-safety standard, and the company says the platform is backed by 25 patents covering how it detects faults and hands off control.

Two moves in 2026 show where FORT is trying to extend that platform beyond the original wireless e-stop hardware it built its reputation on. In May 2026, FORT acquired Mapless AI, a teleoperation company, adding remote human-in-the-loop control alongside its existing onboard fault-detection hardware. In June 2026, FORT announced a collaboration with NVIDIA on an approach it calls outside-in safety, using cameras and sensors mounted in a facility, not just sensors on the robot itself, to catch hazards a robot's own onboard sensors might miss.

That direction matters because it answers a real gap in how most robots handle safety today. A robot's onboard sensors only see what's in front of them; a person approaching from a blind angle, or a forklift crossing a robot's path from outside its sensor range, is exactly the kind of hazard a facility-mounted camera network can catch that the robot alone cannot.

A shared safety layer also solves a procurement problem most fleet operators run into once they own more than one robot brand. Training a safety team on a separate stop procedure and alert system for every vendor does not scale past two or three robot types on a single floor. A common layer, regardless of which company built the underlying machine, is what lets a facility add a new robot vendor without retraining its entire safety staff on a new system.

What to Verify Before This Deal Closes

This merger has not closed as of the August 18, 2026 announcement, and the terms above are the negotiated deal structure, not a completed transaction. A SPAC merger can still fall apart or get repriced between announcement and closing if shareholders vote it down, redeem their shares in large numbers, or the SEC raises issues during registration review.

The 67% projected ownership stake and the $182 million net cash figure both assume minimal shareholder redemptions from Newbury Street II's trust account, an assumption that does not always hold. If a large share of SPAC shareholders redeem for cash rather than roll into the combined company, FORT would end up with less cash and existing shareholders with a larger ownership percentage than currently projected.

FORT Robotics is not the first robotics company to reach public markets this way. See our coverage of how Agility Robotics and Serve Robotics took the SPAC and reverse-merger routes for how those two deals played out after announcement, and our look at Gravis Robotics' $200M SoftBank-led Series A for how private funding rounds are pricing robotics safety and autonomy right now.

• Confirm the merger has closed and shares are actually trading under FROB before treating this as a completed public listing.
• Check the final shareholder-redemption rate against the projected 67% ownership stake and $182 million net cash figure.
• Separate FORT's 600-customer count from its revenue-significant accounts; a logo in a press release is not proof of a large contract.
• Watch the Q4 2026 closing timeline against actual SEC registration progress, not just the companies' stated target.