eProsima/Fast-DDS

Fast-DDS is a category-defining open-source project in the robotics and industrial IoT space. Its primary moat is its status as the default middleware implementation for ROS 2 (Robot Operating System), creating a massive ecosystem lock-in and a virtuous cycle of contributions and bug fixes. With over 11 years of development and significant adoption in automotive, defense, and space sectors, the implementation depth is extreme—handling complex edge cases in discovery, security, and zero-copy data transfer that are non-trivial to replicate. Competitively, it faces pressure from RTI Connext (commercial leader) and Eclipse Cyclone DDS (the primary open-source alternative), but its 'default' status in ROS 2 provides a nearly unassailable position for general robotics development. Frontier labs are highly unlikely to compete here as it is low-level networking infrastructure for physical hardware, far outside their core focus on high-level intelligence. The platform risk is low because cloud providers (like AWS with RoboMaker) build on top of Fast-DDS rather than competing with it. Displacement would require a fundamental shift away from the DDS standard in robotics, which is unlikely within a 3-5 year horizon.