Drones Startups

Aerones builds a robotic system for maintaining wind turbine blades, performing tasks including lightning conductivity testing, high-resolution inspection, drainage hole cleaning, cleaning, painting, and leading-edge repair. It serves the wind energy sector with automated turbine maintenance technology.

14 investors

Corvus Robotics develops autonomous indoor drones and software that fly inside warehouses to scan and track inventory, automating inventory management for warehouse and supply chain operators.

11 investors

Lucid Bots is a B2B robotics company that builds drones and ground-based robots for cleaning tasks such as windows, roofs, stadium domes, and industrial tanks. It engineers, manufactures, and supports its cleaning robots for commercial property customers across the United States.

10 investors

Paladin builds autonomous drones and software that dispatch to 911 calls, flying from fire stations to the scene to stream live video and situational details to first responders. It serves public safety and emergency response agencies such as fire departments.

8 investors

Albacore develops mass-producible long-range drone submarines (Ghostfin platform) designed for military autonomous underwater operations. The systems use commercial off-the-shelf components and advanced propulsion technology to enable extended transit and loiter times, with embedded autonomous navigation and analytics for remote mission execution.

7 investors

Iris Automation develops AI-based computer vision software that provides collision avoidance for autonomous industrial drones. The company targets enabling safer beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations.

7 investors

Rownd AI manufactures fully autonomous drones equipped with edge-based intelligence and satellite/cellular redundancy to remove operator dependency, currently deployed with U.S. Special Operations Command and commercial enterprises.

7 investors

JetPack Aviation develops compact VTOL aircraft, including flying motorcycles, designed for heavy-lift transport and optionally piloted operation in urban environments without rotor systems. The aircraft are aimed at point-to-point shipping and short-distance transport, such as between Los Angeles and San Diego.

6 investors

Zeitview provides inspection software for renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure assets, combining visual data capture across more than 60 countries with AI and machine learning to analyze imagery. It delivers faster, lower-cost inspections of energy and infrastructure assets for asset owners and operators.

6 investors

Exosonic develops supersonic unmanned aircraft for military adversary training, with plans to advance the technology toward crewed supersonic passenger aircraft. The company is building a subscale test vehicle to validate autonomous flight and human-unmanned aircraft coordination.

5 investors

Kalam Labs designs and manufactures high-altitude hydrogen-based unmanned aerial vehicles and stratospheric platforms for military and defense applications, including surveillance systems, autonomous weather platforms, and stealth strike swarms capable of operating at 100,000+ feet. The company serves the Indian armed forces with edge-of-space aerial warfare technology developed and manufactured in India.

5 investors

Tornyol develops lightweight autonomous drones equipped with sensors and control software to target and eliminate mosquitoes. The technology aims to reduce the cost of mosquito control for urban pest management and disease vector elimination.

5 investors

Buoyant Aero provides fully electric, self-flying aerial advertising platforms (blimps) as a service for brands and events. The company handles all aspects from envelope design and custom graphics to flight operations and audience engagement, targeting marketing teams and event organizers.

4 investors

Radical Aero builds StratoSats, autonomous solar-powered aircraft that operate at 65,000 feet for extended periods to deliver persistent high-performance infrastructure. The company develops stratospheric platforms for communication and data services.

4 investors

Seeing Systems develops intelligent unmanned systems and autonomous drone platforms for advanced defense applications, combining AI and robotics expertise to deliver cost-effective solutions for training and contested military operations.

4 investors

Velontra develops jet propulsion systems across the Mach spectrum, focusing on low-cost, high-volume manufacturing through vertically integrated design and rapid development cycles.

4 investors

Elodin provides a cloud-based simulation platform for building autonomous systems, targeting developers and engineers creating satellites, drones, and robots. The company aims to make advanced autonomy tooling accessible and affordable to innovators in aerospace and robotics.

3 investors

TerrAvion provides high-revisit-rate aerial imagery for agriculture, delivering weekly in-season imagery to help growers and agronomic partners make quantitative crop decisions. It offers the imagery through a service with an open API and in-field support under a co-delivery model with agronomic partners.

3 investors

Theseus builds robotic situational awareness software using visual positioning for drones that operate in GPS-denied environments. The company serves military and defense platforms, providing a Micro Visual Positioning System designed for contested operational conditions.

3 investors

Earendil develops advanced vision and targeting systems for military and tactical operations, including augmented reality soldier systems, autonomous drone interceptors, and thermal sight products designed for situational awareness and threat detection in contested environments.

2 investors

IMPACT builds a containerized counter-drone defense system that autonomously detects, launches, and intercepts hostile drones, pairing two interceptors: HUNTER for close-range low-altitude threats and SABLE for fast, long-range movers. It targets protection of high-value sites such as data centers, power substations and plants, and airports.

2 investors

Mass Magnetics manufactures high-performance neodymium-iron-boron rare-earth magnets in the United States from recycled and domestic feedstocks, using a rapid sintering process and machine learning to sort scrap by grade and chemistry. It targets defense and industrial buyers needing DFARS-compliant domestic magnets and also sells DFARS-compliant rare-earth alloys to domestic metallurgists.

2 investors

Ornadyne makes flapping-wing unmanned aircraft designed to resemble birds for covert reconnaissance missions. The company addresses limitations of conventional drones by engineering systems optimized for stealth, endurance, and autonomous operation in field environments.

2 investors

Vernius makes drop-in hardware modules that add autonomous or operator-assisted targeting to existing FPV interceptor drones. The module sits between the drone's receiver and flight controller to provide beyond-visual-range sensing, autonomous guidance, or target bearing data for manual pilots, aimed at low-cost, high-volume defense deployment.

2 investors