SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 21, 2026--
Ouster, Inc. (Nasdaq: OUST), a leader in sensing and perception for Physical AI, and Forterra, the leader in autonomous mission systems for military operations in contested environments, today announced that Forterra's Lancer autonomous ground vehicles have completed 1,426 missions and 88 casualty evacuation operations in Ukraine including Ouster Rev7 OS1 digital lidar at the core of their sensor fusion perception stack. Forterra built and delivered 105 Lancers in under six months, and across more than 7,300 miles they have run routes that would otherwise have put a crew inside the vehicle.
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The Lancers arrived in Ukraine in October 2025. Built on the Polaris RANGER XP 1500 and modified in theater with Starlink for resilient communications, each vehicle carries up to 750 kilograms of critical equipment to the war fighters. Lancers are operating in high danger zones where persistent drone surveillance makes crewed vehicles high value targets and creates unnecessary risk for personnel. Instead, uncrewed Lancer systems deliver essential supplies and evacuate wounded soldiers without undue risk to additional personnel.
“Forterra exists to take people out of harm’s way, and in Ukraine, Lancer is doing that every day under constant drone surveillance,” said Forterra CEO Josh Araujo. “As we advance AutoDrive toward higher levels of autonomy, Ouster sensors give us the perception foundation required by the next generation of vehicles.”
To date, Forterra has integrated AutoDrive across more than 50 vehicle platforms deployed in over ten countries. This includes the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport (SMET) program and the Marine Corps ROGUE Fires platform, which recently entered Block 2 production, making it the most widely deployed autonomous driving system in the defense industry and the first system fielded by the U.S. military to enable autonomous maneuver of ground vehicles.
Forterra’s AutoDrive capability is built upon Forterra’s 24 years of operational experience and over $500 million invested in engineering development and operations. Throughout a multi-year partnership, Ouster digital lidar has been a key part of Forterra’s AutoDrive platform and its operational success.
Ouster's sensors enable 360-degree situational awareness for autonomous ground vehicles operating in complex and unpredictable environments. Each Ouster OS1 sensor covers ground that would otherwise require several narrow field-of-view sensors, which means fewer units for Forterra to integrate, power, and maintain on every vehicle. Additionally, lidar ranges are independent of ambient light, and dual returns report both an obscurant and the surface behind it, so perception holds in fog, dust, rain, and darkness.
"Forterra operates autonomous ground vehicles in some of the most challenging environments on the planet, where reliable perception and safety are critical to the vehicle operators and soldiers," said Angus Pacala, co-founder and CEO of Ouster. "Ouster's technology gives these vehicles a detailed, real-time understanding of their surroundings, helping them navigate complex terrain and operate with greater confidence when GPS, road markings and ideal conditions cannot be relied upon."
Next-Gen Sensing, Built to Automotive Standards
Ouster's next-generation native color digital lidar, Rev8, is designed for ASIL-B functional safety to ISO 26262, cybersecurity to ISO 21434, and support for automotive ethernet, all requirements that unmanned ground vehicle programs increasingly demand.
Off-road work causes constant vibration and shock and subjects lidar sensors to temperatures that swing from arctic cold to desert heat. Rev8 is the most rugged lidar family Ouster has built yet, qualified from -40 °C to +85 °C and ingress-protected against dust and water, allowing sensing in the harshest conditions. Rev8 also captures color in the same silicon as the 3D data, giving perception software a second channel alongside range for classifying what is in the scene.
About Ouster
Ouster (Nasdaq: OUST) is a leader in sensing and perception for Physical AI across industrial, robotics, automotive, and smart infrastructure. With a unified platform of high-performance digital lidar, cameras, AI compute, sensor fusion and perception software, and AI models, Ouster delivers solutions that improve quality of life in the physical world. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Ouster has a global presence serving thousands of customers with offices in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. For more information about our products, visit www.ouster.com, contact our sales team, or connect with us on X or LinkedIn.
About Forterra
Forterra is the autonomy backbone for distributed, mission-aware, resilient military operations in contested environments. Building the foundational autonomy platforms that coordinates weapons, sensors, and users through distributed mobility, compute, and communications, anywhere, under fire, without risking human life, Forterra empowers its customers to deploy autonomy as a force multiplier, extending reach, readiness survivability and effectiveness across the battlespace and industrial applications. Forterra is headquartered in Clarksburg, Md., with offices in Arlington, Va., Winter Park, Fl., Ketchum, Id. and Palo Alto, Ca. To learn more, go to forterra.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Ouster intends such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements are based upon current plans, estimates and expectations of management that are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. The inclusion of forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation that such plans, estimates and expectations will be achieved. Words such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “plan,” “could,” “estimate,” “possible,” “potential,” “pursue,” “likely,” and the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, though not all forward-looking statements use these words or expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding the capabilities of Ouster’s products, including their reliability under rugged conditions; the anticipated performance, benefits to and expectations around customer adoption and application of Ouster’s product offerings; and uses for Physical AIall constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expected, including, but not limited to, product quality and liability risks; supply chain constraints; cancellation or postponement of contracts or unsuccessful implementations; risks related to the use of AI tools by us and others, including risks related to product performance, cybersecurity, and data privacy; Ouster’s ability to respond to evolving regulations and standards; and other important factors discussed in Ouster’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and as may be further updated from time to time in Ouster’’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully and in the totality of the circumstances when evaluating these forward-looking statements, and not to place undue reliance on any of them. Any such forward-looking statements represent management’s reasonable estimates and beliefs as of the date of this press release. While Ouster may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, it disclaims any obligation to do so, other than as may be required by law, even if subsequent events cause its views to change.
Through the lens of an Ouster Rev8 OS1 Max see how Forterra perceives complex terrain to navigate autonomously.
A fleet of Forterra Lancers, equipped with Ouster lidar, prepares for deployment to Ukraine.
Forterra's Lancer keeps crews out of harm's way, this one lost on a mission in Ukraine with no one aboard.
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 21, 2026--
LTK, the pioneer of Creator Commerce™, today released findings from the fourth annual Creator Marketing Study in partnership with Northwestern University. The study reveals creator marketing has moved beyond one-off campaigns to become always-on marketing infrastructure, reshaping how brands organize, measure and scale creator programs. As creator marketing expands across the customer journey and the organization, the challenge now is operating it more intelligently at scale.
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Always-On Creator Marketing Is the New Baseline
Creator marketing has outgrown the one-off campaign model. Today, 91% of brands operate programs with an always-on component, while the average number of creators brands work with has increased 275% year over year.
Creator programs are also reaching more teams across the organization, spanning marketing (74%), social (65%), media (61%) and brand (60%). Affiliate and PR are also increasing their involvement - PR increased 15 points to 30% while affiliate rose to 36%, up 7 points year over year. As programs grow larger and more cross-functional, brands are rethinking the organizational structures, budgets and measurement models originally built for one-off campaigns.
The types of creators that brands value are also broadening. Lifestyle creators still lead in importance at 55%, but category-niche specialists (50%) and certified experts such as chefs, dietitians and trainers (49%), are close behind. Certified experts posted the largest gain in the study, up 18 percentage points from last year and category-niche specialists rose 6 points.
“Brands have stopped asking whether creator marketing works and started asking how to run it well,” said Frank Dudley, a Professor at Northwestern University and Associate Director of its Retail Analytics Council. “Creators build the confidence that moves people to buy, and commerce media puts that trust where the purchase happens. Seven in ten brands now use or plan to use creator content on marketplaces, and two-thirds on retail media networks.”
Creators are the Commerce Engine
Creator influence now extends beyond awareness, spanning the entire customer journey. Marketers report creators’ strongest influence at conversion and loyalty, with 55% rating their impact as high at each stage, followed by consideration (52%), discovery (50%) and repeat purchase (48%). Trusted creator recommendations are helping consumers decide what to buy while also strengthening relationships with brands after the sale.
As creator influence grows, brands are shifting how they measure success, focusing more on the actions creator content drives. The three most important creator-campaign reporting metrics are now awareness and campaign sales, tied at 51%, followed closely by conversion rates at 50%. Compared with last year’s study, campaign sales rose from 37% to 51% (+14 points) and conversion rates from 39% to 50% (+11 points), while awareness eased from 58%.
Human Trust Makes the Entire System Valuable
Technology can help brands scale creator marketing, but trust is what makes it work. For the second year in a row, marketers rank creators as the most trusted source of product recommendations, with 44% selecting creators, ahead of social media ads (34%) and celebrities (22%). That trust advantage is increasing, with creators widening the gap over social ads and celebrities year over year.
That trust matters throughout the customer journey. Marketers report that creators help consumers feel confident in their decisions (65%), demonstrate how products work in real life (61%) and simplify complex choices (57%). Clear, useful product information (62%), transparency about paid relationships (60%), genuine category expertise (54%), and honest comparisons (51%) are the leading factors that make creator recommendations feel trusted.
The Creator Post Is Just the Start
Creator content is becoming a core asset across the marketing ecosystem, extending beyond social into paid media, owned channels, commerce and, now, AI-driven search.
While 92% of brands use creator content in social advertising, brands are also expanding their use of creators across other marketing channels, including content and email (52%), display (50%), affiliate marketing (39%), and connected TV (36%).
For the first time in the study, 41% of marketers say they use creator content for AI-driven search visibility, a new use case that did not appear in previous studies. Brands are using creator content to influence how their products show up in AI-powered search experiences, extending its value beyond traditional channels.
Turning Creator Intelligence into Action
As creator marketing continues to scale, brands are looking to AI not just as a feature, but as a way to simplify the work, improve decisions and provide better business outcomes.
AI is now an expected part of how brands run creator marketing, with 95% of marketers rating it as a must-have or important when evaluating creator marketing platforms. Marketers are looking to AI for better personalization, performance forecasting, strategic planning and content reuse across channels. Yet operational complexity remains high: 90% of brands want a less complex creator marketing technology stack, while 45% still rely on manual processes such as spreadsheets and email.
“Creator marketing is no longer campaign marketing. It has become core marketing infrastructure,” said Amber Venz Box, Co-Founder and President of LTK. “But the industry has scaled faster than the systems built to support it. Brands are managing more creators, more content and more complexity than ever before, and the work surrounding the work has never been greater. The next chapter is about simplification. AI alone isn't the advantage. It's the intelligence behind it that will enable brands to make better decisions, remove friction and turn trusted creator relationships into measurable business growth.”
As creator marketing expands, LTK is building the infrastructure brands need to operate it at scale. More than 4,000 brands use the LTK Brand Platform, which connects creator discovery, activation, management and measurement in one experience. The platform is powered by LTK’s proprietary Commerce Intelligence Graph, built on more than 100 billion data points across 15 years of creator, consumer, product and transaction behavior. In the past 12 months, brands have invested $450 million in LTK Creators.
Building on that foundation, LTK introduced the next evolution of its Brand Platform: a new agentic experience. The experience is designed to help marketers turn business objectives into launch-ready creator campaigns through conversation, recommending campaign structure, creators and next-best actions while proactively surfacing trends and optimization opportunities and keeping marketers in control of every decision.
The reported data summarizes key findings from research conducted by LTK in collaboration with Northwestern University in June 2026. The study surveyed 209 C-suite marketers and senior decision-makers at brands that invest in creator marketing, the majority at organizations with more than $100 million in revenue. Because the 2026 survey updated its sample and questionnaire, comparisons with prior years should be considered directional.
To learn more about the LTK and Northwestern University Creator Marketing Study, visit https://company.shopltk.com/en/brands/northwestern-university-study .
About LTK
LTK is the global creator commerce platform that turned creator influence into a worldwide economy. Founded in 2011 by Amber Venz Box and Baxter Box, LTK is a three-sided marketplace with dedicated platforms for creators, brands, and consumers.
LTK empowers creators to retain, nurture and grow direct relationships with their audiences through their LTK profiles, creating lasting businesses. For brands, LTK is a full-funnel, performance channel that scales globally, and turns creators into a retailer’s tech-enabled power partner. Today, LTK powers over $6B in annual retail sales, supports 60,000+ creator-brand collaborations each year, and enables more than 8,000 retailers to scale through creator-led marketing. LTK’s mission to empower creator success has led to over 464 women becoming self-made millionaires. Nearly 40% of Gen Z and Millennial women in the U.S. use LTK to discover and follow trusted creators, fueling the platform’s 44M+ monthly users.
Headquartered in Dallas, TX, LTK operates across five continents. Download the LTK app in the App Store or Google Play. For updates, follow @ltk.hq on Instagram and @shopltk on X and LTK on LinkedIn.
The fourth-annual study reveals creator marketing has moved beyond one-off campaigns to become always-on marketing infrastructure, reshaping how brands organize, measure and scale creator programs.
