Elroy Air raises $40 million in Series A financing to accelerate the development of its Chaparral VTOL cargo aircraft

Elroy Air has raised $40 mil­lion in Series A financ­ing, with com­pa­ny CEO Dave Mer­rill say­ing this lat­est invest­ment will help pro­pel the busi­ness to the next phase of devel­op­ment — which includes advanc­ing its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grammes and com­plet­ing the build of its full capac­i­ty pre-pro­duc­tion air­craft.

This lat­est invest­ment came from Mar­lin­spike Cap­i­tal, Lock­heed Mar­tin Ven­tures and Prosperity7 Ven­tures. There was also con­tin­ued back­ing from exist­ing investors Cat­a­pult Ven­tures, Dia­mond­Stream Part­ners, Side X Side Man­age­ment, Shield Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Pre­cur­sor Ven­tures. It now brings Elroy Air’s total invest­ment raised to date to $48 mil­lion.

Elroy Air is devel­op­ing its autonomous VTOL air­craft — known as Chap­ar­ral — which aims to deliv­er car­go rapid­ly and flex­i­bly by air. Chap­ar­ral is designed to fly 300–500 lbs of car­go at a time over a 300-mile range.

Neil Kee­gan, CEO/CIO of Mar­lin­spike Cap­i­tal, said: “Elroy Air is a per­fect exam­ple of the type of high-growth com­pa­ny that we invest in. My part­ners and I all served in the US Mil­i­tary, and we found­ed Mar­lin­spike to bring our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences to bear on invest­ments that are ben­e­fi­cial to the defense of our coun­try.

“We invest in the most promis­ing dual-use tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, and the Elroy Air team is lead­ing the field with its unique tech­nol­o­gy and its oppor­tu­ni­ty to rev­o­lu­tionise both the com­mer­cial and defense logis­tics mar­kets. We know first­hand how valu­able Chap­ar­ral will be deployed with our US Forces. We see an incred­i­ble growth tra­jec­to­ry ahead and are thrilled to be teamed with Dave, Clint, and the rest of the out­stand­ing Elroy Air team.”

The com­mer­cial couri­er, express, and par­cel mar­ket is cur­rent­ly esti­mat­ed at $450 bil­lion world­wide and is grow­ing every year. Deliv­ery drones are gain­ing trac­tion for express short-range par­cel logis­tics, med­ical logis­tics, and the defense mar­kets — are­nas where autonomous sys­tems and robot­ics are in increas­ing demand.

Elroy Air says Chap­ar­ral is dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from oth­er deliv­ery drones by its sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er pay­load capac­i­ty, and from ‘air taxi’ vehi­cles by its long-range oper­a­tion, unmanned / unpilot­ed flight, and autonomous car­go loading/unloading.

The use cas­es for Chap­ar­ral is also extend­ed across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, from express capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vice areas for multi­na­tion­al par­cel ship­pers, imme­di­ate human­i­tar­i­an aid and relief in dis­as­ter and fire-fight­ing sit­u­a­tions. It will also pro­vide flex­i­ble logis­tics for the ener­gy and min­ing indus­tries and rapid autonomous aer­i­al resup­ply for US and allied troops in the field.

Elroy Air is cur­rent­ly val­i­dat­ing sub­sys­tems and soft­ware and a com­pos­ites part­ner is build­ing air­frames, while the com­pa­ny plans to com­plete the build of the next sys­tem by the end of the year and begin flight val­i­da­tion with US Air Force and Navy part­ners in 2022.

Kofi Asante, VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and Strat­e­gy, said: “Rapid logis­tics has expo­nen­tial­ly grown over the last cou­ple of years. We believe that build­ing an autonomous VTOL logis­tics sys­tem that does not require addi­tion­al infra­struc­ture can play a vital role enabling rapid deliv­ery for com­mer­cial, defense and human­i­tar­i­an logis­tics.”

The Elroy Air team is a ded­i­cat­ed, diverse group of experts in autonomous sys­tems and soft­ware archi­tec­tures, aero­space engi­neer­ing, robot­ics, design, ship­ping logis­tics, sup­ply chain and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

With head­quar­ters in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia the com­pa­ny was start­ed by Dave Mer­rill and Clint Cope who met while work­ing in the small unmanned aer­i­al sys­tem indus­try.

Elroy Air’s lead­er­ship has back­grounds from Stan­ford, MIT, Geor­gia Tech, the Whar­ton School of Busi­ness, and the aero­space, robot­ics, and drone indus­tries.

Recent­ly added to Elroy Air’s ros­ter as Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer is Jay Wak­en­shaw. He has held numer­ous high pro­file lead­er­ship roles in both Pri­vate Equi­ty held com­pa­nies and glob­al pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­nies, includ­ing GKN Aero­space, Ascent Aero­space and Toray Advanced Com­pos­ites.

Aysar Tayeb, Exec­u­tive Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Prosperity7 Ven­tures, added: “With their strong team, unique design fea­tures, hybrid engine allow­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty for heav­ier loads and longer dis­tances, Elroy Air is well posi­tioned to become a mar­ket leader. We believe tar­get­ing logis­tics will help accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of the VTOL space and pave the way for oth­er appli­ca­tions.”