Forerunner AI

What do they actually do

Forerunner AI builds a knowledge and copilot tool for aircraft maintenance and engineering teams. It connects to a company’s document stores (e.g., Confluence, GitHub, Office, OEM manuals), builds an internal knowledge layer, and lets technicians and engineers query it via Slack or a search UI to get sourced answers quickly instead of digging through PDFs and wikis source source.

Beyond search, the copilot can run standard engineering calculations (e.g., mass budgets, mass flow), return results with citations, and update values back into documents so teams stay in sync. The platform continuously synchronizes content and emphasizes guardrails so responses trace back to authoritative source documents source source.

The product appears to be in early pilot deployments with demoable features (Slackbot, integrations, calculation examples). The YC page lists the company as founded in 2024 with a team of two, suggesting a focus on hands-on pilots and demos with initial customers today source source.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Line technicians in hangars or on the tarmac: They lose minutes to hours finding the right procedure or spec across PDFs and internal sites, risking delays or using out-of-date instructions source source.
• MRO planners and shop managers: They manually piece together inspection histories, part records, and procedures to schedule work and prove compliance, which is slow and error-prone source source.
• Aerospace engineering teams (design, propulsion, structures): They repeat similar calculations and struggle to keep values/requirements consistent across documents, leading to rework and missed constraints source source.
• AOG/operations and dispatch teams: When an aircraft is grounded, they need instant access to troubleshooting steps, parts status, and limits; slow answers extend downtime and complicate decisions source source.
• Defense and regulated-operations maintainers: They need verifiable, auditable traces to source documents and strong security; current processes make compliance evidence and chain-of-custody hard to maintain source source.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Use warm intros (founders/YC/industry) to run tightly scoped pilots with MRO shops and line teams, connecting to existing docs and demonstrating faster answers and calculations inside real workflows; capture before/after metrics to convert to references source source.
• First 50: Package a repeatable pilot kit (standard connectors, onboarding checklist, templates) and use early references to sell to adjacent bases and peer airlines/MROs; add 1–2 customer-facing hires to run pilots and produce quantified case studies source source.
• First 100: Productize the most-used integrations and automation templates for faster onboarding; scale via vertical SDRs and channel partners (MRO software vendors/SIs), plus packaged compliance and SLAs to unlock multi-site regulated accounts source source.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Core TAM is aviation MRO/maintenance & engineering software, with recent estimates in the roughly $7–$11B range today; broader MRO/services spending is far larger but mostly non-software Grand View Research GMI FutureMarketInsights.

Bottom-up calculation:

A bottom-up view aligns by counting airlines, independent MRO providers, OEM/defense maintenance units, and large engineering orgs (low-thousands globally) and applying a mid–six-figure annual software budget per org for maintenance/engineering tooling—yielding a single-digit to low–double-digit billions market, consistent with published estimates.

Assumptions:

• Customers are airlines, MRO shops, OEM/defense maintenance units, and engineering orgs numbering in the low thousands globally.
• Average annual MRO/M&E software spend per medium-to-large org is in the mid–six figures (with larger fleets above that).
• Forerunner addresses a meaningful share of the MRO/M&E software budget tied to knowledge, calculations, and workflow automation.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Swiss-AS AMOS: Widely used MRO/M&E suite for airlines and MRO providers (planning, maintenance execution, and compliance). Established incumbent in airline maintenance software.
• IFS (Maintenix): Enterprise maintenance and engineering software used by airlines, MROs, and defense. Notable for large-scale deployments and breadth of maintenance functionality.
• Ramco Aviation: M&E/MRO software covering engineering, maintenance, supply chain, and compliance across commercial and defense operators.
• Ultramain Systems: M&E/MRO and electronic logbook software for airlines and MROs, focused on paperless maintenance and operational efficiency.
• Flatirons: Technical publications and maintenance content management used by airlines/OEMs; relevant for document control and knowledge delivery in regulated environments.