Elroy Air to become publicly traded company worth approx. $1bn, with transaction expected to close in Q4 2026

Elroy Air is to become a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, after it entered into a defin­i­tive busi­ness com­bi­na­tion agree­ment (BCA) with Colum­bus Cir­cle Cap­i­tal Corp II, a spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny led by the man­age­ment team of Inflec­tion Point Asset Man­age­ment (Inflec­tion Point) and Cohen & Com­pa­ny.

The trans­ac­tion val­ues Elroy Air at $800 mil­lion pre-mon­ey and is expect­ed to close in Q4 2026, sub­ject to cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions includ­ing reg­u­la­to­ry and share­hold­er approval.

In a press release issued at the end of last week, Elroy Air has more than $165 mil­lion in com­mit­ted PIPE cap­i­tal, which is expect­ed to ful­ly fund com­mer­cial scale pro­duc­tion of the Chap­ar­ral with U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner Kratos Defense & Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions.

Six­ty five mil­lion dol­lars of the more than $165 mil­lion PIPE is fund­ing in con­nec­tion with the exe­cu­tion of the BCA. Post-trans­ac­tion, Elroy Air is expect­ed to have an enter­prise val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly $1.0 bil­lion.

Elroy Air Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Andrew Clare, PhD, said: “As a pub­lic com­pa­ny with access to sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal, Elroy Air will be ide­al­ly posi­tioned to meet the ris­ing demand for Chap­ar­ral, our heavy-car­go drone.”

“Autonomous flight is the next great logis­tics rev­o­lu­tion — and Elroy Air intends to lead it. The U.S. has made drone dom­i­nance a nation­al strate­gic pri­or­i­ty, and that pri­or­i­ty is only mean­ing­ful if Amer­i­can indus­try can actu­al­ly deliv­er.”

He added: “This trans­ac­tion ensures we can by rapid­ly scal­ing pro­duc­tion for U.S. and allied forces and com­mer­cial mar­kets alike. I’m excit­ed to part­ner with Inflec­tion Point, a firm with a track record of suc­cess­ful­ly scal­ing high-impact tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies in order to sat­is­fy sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket demand.”

Elroy Air is redefin­ing autonomous heavy-car­go trans­port with Chap­ar­ral — an advanced VTOL drone designed to car­ry 500+ pounds of car­go.

The air­craft was engi­neered with a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train to deliv­er the reli­a­bil­i­ty of elec­tric propul­sion but with extend­ed range of up to 450 miles and with no charg­ing infra­struc­ture required.

Designed for max­i­mum oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty, Chap­ar­ral fea­tures mul­ti-mis­sion pods that enable rapid recon­fig­u­ra­tion across diverse pay­load types and cus­tomer needs, unlock­ing a sig­nif­i­cant glob­al total address­able mar­ket span­ning defense, com­mer­cial logis­tics, and rapid response.

Key com­pa­ny high­lights include:

• A demand pipeline exceed­ing 1,400 air­craft and over $5 bil­lion in poten­tial rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ty from lead­ing logis­tics and avi­a­tion com­pa­nies, includ­ing Bris­tow Group, Barq Group, SLI, and FedEx
• Six + years of active defense pro­grams with the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Air Force
• A man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner­ship with Kratos Defense & Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions as the exclu­sive U.S.manufacturer of the Chap­ar­ral, with first pro­duc­tion air­craft planned for late 2026
• A $200M joint ven­ture ini­tial agree­ment signed with Barq Group to estab­lish an inter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Abu Dhabi serv­ing the MENA region. Elroy Air and Barq Group plan to begin ini­tial flight oper­a­tions in the UAE in 2027 using U.S.-built air­craft fol­lowed by the start of local pro­duc­tion in Abu Dhabi in 2028
• The only OEM with a pur­pose-built, heavy-pay­load uncrewed car­go drone select­ed for the U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion’s eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP), estab­lished under the Unleash­ing Amer­i­can Drone Dom­i­nance Exec­u­tive Order. USDOT’s announce­ment specif­i­cal­ly calls for the start of oper­a­tions in 2026
• Com­plet­ed test­ing by Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) in which the Chap­ar­ral passed all 22 test items for inter-island logis­tics capa­bil­i­ties
• Backed by pre­mier defense and ven­ture investors, includ­ing Lock­heed Mar­tin Ven­tures, Shield Cap­i­tal, Mar­lin­spike Part­ners, Snow­point Ven­tures, Dia­mond­Stream Part­ners, and Cat­a­pult Ven­tures

Inflec­tion Point’s pri­or and pend­ing trans­ac­tions in the nation­al secu­ri­ty and Aero­space & Defense sec­tors include Intu­itive Machines, USA Rare Earth, Mer­lin Labs and Quan­tum Space.

Michael Blitzer, Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer of Inflec­tion Point, said: “Elroy Air is emerg­ing at the inter­sec­tion of two mas­sive sec­u­lar shifts: the mod­ern­iza­tion of defense tech­nol­o­gy and the automa­tion of glob­al sup­ply chains.

“Through a com­bi­na­tion of pro­pri­etary autonomous avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy and recur­ring soft­ware licens­ing rev­enue streams, Elroy has estab­lished a high­ly defen­si­ble fly­wheel across defense and com­mer­cial mar­kets. The company’s mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar demand pipeline and strate­gic part­ner­ships with Bris­tow and Barq under­score the urgency of the mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty and Elroy’s grow­ing strate­gic impor­tance with­in the indus­try.”

Trans­ac­tion Overview
The busi­ness com­bi­na­tion is expect­ed to deliv­er gross pro­ceeds of at least $165 mil­lion from the com­mit­ted PIPE, with up to $230 mil­lion addi­tion­al pro­ceeds depend­ing on redemp­tions. Elroy Air cur­rent­ly intends to use these pro­ceeds to accel­er­ate its tech­nol­o­gy and plat­form devel­op­ment, ramp its abil­i­ty to deliv­er its sys­tems to cus­tomers, enable strate­gic acqui­si­tions, and ensure top tech­ni­cal tal­ent across areas, includ­ing soft­ware and hybrid-elec­tric sys­tems, con­tin­ue join­ing Elroy Air.

The Boards of Direc­tors of both Elroy Air and Colum­bus Cir­cle Cap­i­tal Corp II have unan­i­mous­ly approved the pro­posed trans­ac­tion. The deal is expect­ed to close in late 2026, sub­ject to cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions, includ­ing approval by CMII’s share­hold­ers and reg­u­la­to­ry review. Upon clos­ing, the com­bined com­pa­ny will use the Elroy Air name and expects to be list­ed on the Nas­daq under the tick­er sym­bol “ELRY.”

Advi­sors
Bar­clays is act­ing as exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor and exclu­sive cap­i­tal mar­kets advi­sor to Elroy Air. Bar­clays is act­ing as Lead Place­ment Agent on the PIPE, with Can­tor and Cohen & Com­pa­ny Cap­i­tal Mar­kets, a divi­sion of Cohen & Com­pa­ny Secu­ri­ties, LLC, also act­ing as Place­ment Agents. Can­tor and Cohen & Com­pa­ny Cap­i­tal Mar­kets are serv­ing as finan­cial and cap­i­tal mar­kets advi­sors to CMII. DLA Piper LLP (US) is serv­ing as legal advi­sor to Elroy Air. White & Case LLP is serv­ing as coun­sel to CMII and Inflec­tion Point. Kirk­land and Ellis LLP is serv­ing as legal advi­sor to the Place­ment Agents.