AURA Secures $75 Million in New Funding Round

Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tions of its pro­pri­etary net­work designed to enable remote­ly pilot­ed com­mer­cial flights beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS), AURA Net­work Sys­tems (AURA) has closed $75 mil­lion in fund­ing.

The deal involves $55 mil­lion com­mit­ted by Fortress Invest­ment Group or its affil­i­ates, and $20 mil­lion from pre­vi­ous investors Mudrick Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Track­er Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, or their affil­i­ates.

The company’s safe­ty-crit­i­cal net­work capa­bil­i­ties as a com­mand and con­trol com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice provider were exhib­it­ed dur­ing the recent Nation­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Indus­try Forum in Spring­field, Ohio, as well as mid-July demon­stra­tions in West­ern Mary­land.

Both involved air­craft out­fit­ted with an AURA air­borne radio and voice comms mod­ule sup­port­ing the company’s com­mit­ment to pro­vide a safe and reli­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice encom­pass­ing com­mand and con­trol data, teleme­try data and air traf­fic con­trol voice ser­vice.

AURA CEO Bill Tolpe­gin said: “The financ­ing enables AURA to con­tin­ue our core devel­op­ment work while pro­vid­ing us with the finan­cial run­way to launch com­mer­cial ser­vices in a reg­u­la­to­ry-com­pli­ant net­work specif­i­cal­ly designed for avi­a­tion.”

With the invest­ment from Fortress, man­ag­ing part­ner Drew McK­night will serve on the company’s board of direc­tors. He added: “We have fol­lowed AURA close­ly since its found­ing and are impressed by its launch in 2020 of the nation’s first and only coast-to-coast, secure net­work pur­pose-built for the avi­a­tion indus­try.

“We are con­fi­dent that AURA will emerge as a crit­i­cal inno­va­tor in emerg­ing mar­kets for autonomous air car­go and urban air mobil­i­ty that togeth­er are pro­ject­ed to cap­ture near­ly $150 bil­lion in annu­al spend­ing with­in the next 15 years.”

AURA co-founders cre­at­ed the com­pa­ny in 2019 to build the safest, most reli­able pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work pos­si­ble via Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC)-licensed spec­trum for avi­a­tion-only use and pro­pri­etary tech­nolo­gies.

That approach has led to a four-year coop­er­a­tive R&D agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and two Space Act agree­ments with the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA).

Last July, AURA raised $30.9 mil­lion in equi­ty financ­ing, includ­ing $30 mil­lion from Mudrick Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Track­er Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, as well as near­ly $1 mil­lion from com­pa­ny man­age­ment. The company’s ini­tial financ­ing totaled $7.5 mil­lion.

In July 2021, AURA was one of thir­teen com­pa­nies and one uni­ver­si­ty to sign agree­ments with NASA’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty project’s Nation­al Cam­paign.

NASA adds new part­ners to its Nation­al Cam­paign, with the first phase of flight test­ing to begin next year