Orqa

Market position

Orqa is described as Croatia's drone champion and a significant Croatian defence contractor, positioned within the Western defence ecosystem as a supplier of NDAA-compliant, China-free FPV drones. It is one of the few FPV market participants doing nearly all engineering in house, and it competes with assemblers of third-party components; total funding of just over €20 million is modest relative to the defence tech sector.

Full vertical integration: Orqa designs and manufactures its own components — flight controllers, radios, motors, cameras, PCBs, antennas, headsets and low-latency video transport — instead of assembling third-party parts, with everything except micro-displays produced in Osijek. Avoiding critical Chinese components addresses both security concerns and scaling constraints, and enables NDAA-compliant production.

Technology

Orqa's technology pipeline covers the full FPV stack: antennas, radio controllers, headsets and low-latency video signal transport, supported by electronic, mechanical and optical engineering, embedded and backend software, prototyping and manufacturing. Products include FPV goggles with connectivity add-ons for DVR and live streaming, flight controllers and ESC stacks, and the MRM2-10AI hybrid tactical drone that combines fibre-optic tethered control with the proprietary IRONghost radio system, onboard AI processing and image-based navigation, switching control modes according to jamming and battlefield conditions.

Go-to-market

Direct e-commerce through shop.orqafpv.com with global express shipping, plus reseller distribution for goggles; crowdfunding (Kickstarter) was used for the initial FPV.One launch, and community engagement runs through a forum, social channels and customer support. Defence sales run through government and armed forces procurement and through partnerships with defence primes and integrators such as Baykar, DOK-ING, By Light Professional IT Services, Firestorm, Red River Depot, Barzan and General Cherry. International expansion is pursued via the Global Manufacturing Partnership Program.

FPV drone racing and freestyle pilots and hobbyists buying goggles, electronics and ready-to-fly quads; defence and government customers including the Croatian Army, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the US Department of Defense; and international manufacturing partners producing Orqa-designed systems under license.

Geography

Headquarters, development and production in Osijek, Croatia (J.J. Strossmayera 341), serving customers globally. Manufacturing partnerships are being established in North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, with cooperation agreements signed in Qatar, Ukraine, the United States and Canada, and a US spinoff, Orqa US, operating a 17,000 m² production facility in Port Orange, Florida.

History

Orqa was founded in late 2018 in Osijek, Croatia by Srđan Kovačević, Ivan Jelušić and Vlatko Matijević. It presented a prototype of its FPV.One goggles for racing and freestyle pilots at CES in Las Vegas in January 2019 and, after roughly two years of prototyping, launched a Kickstarter campaign on 15 June that reached its goal within two minutes, exceeded it by 200% within five minutes and sold more than 600 goggles. First FPV.One batches shipped to resellers in January 2020, and the FPV.Connect add-on for DVR access and real-time flight livestreaming followed in May 2020; the company also began building racing drones. In 2023 Orqa acquired Swiss FPV electronics maker ImmersionRC, and in May of that year faced an incident in which its FPV goggles were bricked by a third-party software issue. In 2024 it raised a $5.8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners and entered partnerships with Baykar (integrating Orqa FPV drones onto the Bayraktar TB2) and DOK-ING (manned-unmanned teaming). In 2025 it expanded Osijek capacity to 280,000 drones per year, won a €10 million Croatian Army order, and launched a Global Manufacturing Partnership Program; US DoD purchases were halted after a Chinese-made radio module was found in its drones, which the CEO said was subsequently moved in-house. In 2026 it signed cooperation agreements with partners in Qatar, Ukraine, the US and Canada, set up Orqa US with By Light Professional IT Services and a 17,000 m² facility in Port Orange, Florida, unveiled the MRM2-10AI hybrid drone, and closed a €12.7 million Series A.

Risks & controversies

In May 2023 Orqa FPV goggles were bricked by a third-party software issue attributed either to an unpaid firmware license or to ransomware. In 2025, US Department of Defense purchases of its drones were halted after a radio module inside the drones was found to have been manufactured in China; the CEO said production of that module had since been moved in-house. Total funding raised is modest by defence tech standards, and the planned scale-up to over one million drones a year depends on third-party manufacturing partners.