Top Drones Startups in 2024

Auterion is the drone software platform built for enterprise that makes large-scale drone operations simple, safe and fully integrated in workflows. With offices in California and Switzerland, we’ve raised $25M in venture-backed funding from investors such as Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures. Our global customers include General Electric (GE) Aviation, Quantum Systems, Impossible Aerospace, and the U.S. Department of Defense. We’re leaders in an open source movement bigger than ourselves and we’ve been on the same mission for over a decade, beginning with Pixhawk and the revolutionary PX4 software created by our co-founder Lorenz Meier. Our mission is to be the drone platform of choice for enterprise, government and drone manufacturers, while accelerating the drone industry by driving forward open standards to create a common, future-proof roadmap in a thriving, open ecosystem of buyers and vendors.

Zipline was founded to create the first logistics system that serves all humans equally. We design, manufacture and operate the world’s largest instant logistics and delivery system that is used by businesses, governments and consumers. Zipline is transforming the way goods move, from powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for e-commerce, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes. The technology is complex, and includes autonomous, electric drones, but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. By transitioning to clean, electric, instant logistics, we can decarbonize delivery, decrease road congestion, and reduce fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access for billions of people. Zipline operates on three continents (North America, Africa and Asia) and in seven countries - Rwanda, Ghana, the U.S., Nigeria, Japan, Kenya and Côte D’Ivoire. Zipline has made more than 540,000 deliveries to real customers, and currently completes one every 90 seconds. Zipline has flown 40 million autonomous commercial miles, delivered almost 5 million products (including more than 8 million vaccine doses). Zipline has two delivery platforms - a long-range system, Platform 1, and its next-generation home delivery system, Platform 2. Our drones are what people see, but they are only a small percentage of what we do. Behind each delivery is a complex network of airspace deconfliction tools, inventory management, fulfillment software, warehousing, performance management, cold chain storage, and more. Zipline’s instant logistics system is a trusted partner for businesses, governments and consumers, and currently supports the medical, health and retail sectors, delivering blood, vaccines, COVID supplies, prescriptions, e-commerce items, products that support human and animal health, and food.

Founded in 2013, DroneDeploy is a San Francisco-based startup that provides cloud-control software solutions for drones which include automated flight safety checks, workflows, and real-time mapping and data processing. The company has partnered with leading drone manufacturers like DJI to provide its software to end users in a variety of industries, including agriculture, real estate, mining, construction and many other commercial and consumer arenas. DroneDeploy is compatible with any drone.

bluerivert.com We use computer vision to identify weeds in organic crop fields and then selectively eliminate them using very hot organic oil. Our product mounts behind a tractor. We are an alternative to chemical fertilizers which organic farmers can't use. Our first target is organic vegetables growers who currently spend upto $1000 per acre to weed their fields by hand. Longer term will move to weeding of corn in glyphosate resistant areas. $25B/yr are spent in herbicides. Update: 5/13. We've started recurring revenue in lettuce thinning - an application that is very well suited to our technology. Our first customer is the largest lettuce grower in the world. Out team has now 15 people including 4 PhDs, an agronomist, and experienced business people in the Ag-tech area.

Pyka’s goal is to provide society with a new form of safe, clean, and cost-effective transportation enabled by autonomous electric aviation. To get there, we’re taking a different approach than most. We're applying our technologies to every industry where autonomous electric aircraft can be useful, starting with the highest value and most dangerous jobs. In doing so, we're building game-changing products manufactured at scale, while perfecting the safety, reliability, and capabilities of our autonomy engine and electric propulsion systems. We design, develop and manufacture an ecosystem of technologies including proprietary flight control software, avionics, high power density motors, motor controllers, batteries, and custom carbon-fiber composite airframes. Today, we supply autonomous electric aircraft for cargo transport and crop protection to real-world customers across four separate continents and have secured industry-first regulatory approvals from the FAA. Both vehicles are highly economical to operate, easy to deploy, and significantly reduce C02 emissions in their respective industries. What you work on at Pyka makes people’s lives better now and brings the future of electric aviation one step closer each day. We foster a welcoming community within our company that promotes experimentation, asking questions, making simple solutions to complex problems, and expressing different views and opinions. We are a transparent company both internally and externally and do not believe in operating in “stealth mode.” Lastly, we don’t work 60 hour weeks, and don’t expect you to either. In this role you will have a great deal of responsibility, earn a competitive salary and benefits,  and contribute to the development of groundbreaking technology.

Wingtra has developed an unmanned aerial robot that flies like a plane, but takes off and lands vertically. The combination of long range and ease of use will make WingtraOne the standard tool to gather data of large assets in various industries. In the professional market, drones are used to gather aerial data of assets. Multicopters like the DJI Phantom are widely used. However, they can map only small areas in a single flight because they are inefficient in forward flight. Therefore large areas are mapped by fixed-wing drones. These systems have to be operated by highly skilled people. They need lots of open space for take-off and landing. Fixed-wing systems need substantial time for setting up. Because of the shortcomings of fixed wings and multirotors, data gathering of large areas has remained expensive. For the first time, drone users get a fixed wing with the usability of a multirotor drone. The WingtraOne can take off and land everywhere and requires no setup time.

Sawback Technologies is developing a proprietary solution to visualize and analyze underground data, to address a $1.59 billion market in the excavation market that relies on this information to avoid costly infrastructure damage and fatalities. This solution, which can be carried by personnel, or drone, is capable of covering large areas quickly and efficiently, and the data is accurately interpreted for the end-user, without the need for skilled personnel.

We have six main products that utilize Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to do everything from making Renewable Energy more efficient to helping Drones navigate urban air traffic, to predicting catastrophic events, to cybersecurity, to the latest Defense Department initiatives.

We are creating a new form of transportation to advance the future of our civilization. Our story starts with fully autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicles with vertical take-off and landing capability and used for cargo transportation.

We currently have two public products, Spotter and Trident. Spotter is an ocean sensor that can measure surface conditions of the ocean. Trident is an underwater drone that allows anybody to quickly feel comfortable piloting and exploring beneath the surface. Day-to-day, we are focusing to continuously improving our existing products and services while pushing on responsible, but zealous, scaling and growth. In the pipeline, we have many large projects targeting the health of our oceans and the industries that are based on the water.