Whisper Aero gets $32 million investment led by syndicate

Whis­per Aero has had a $32 mil­lion Series A invest­ment led by a syn­di­cate of Men­lo Ven­tures, EVE Atlas, Capricorn’s Tech­nol­o­gy Impact Fund and Con­nor Cap­i­tal, with fol­low-on par­tic­i­pa­tion by Kin­dred Ven­tures, Abstract Ven­tures, Mov­ing Cap­i­tal, AeroX Ven­tures, Cos­mos Ven­tures, Linse Cap­i­tal and LaunchTN.

The com­pa­ny assem­bled a world class team with past expe­ri­ence at NASA, Lock­heed Mar­tin, Boe­ing, Northrop Grum­man, Joby Avi­a­tion, Kit­ty Hawk, Pratt & Whit­ney, and Rolls Royce. Many on the team have earned advanced degrees from top tier uni­ver­si­ties like MIT, Stan­ford, Geor­gia Tech, Vir­ginia Tech, and oth­ers.

It was able to recruit top-tier tal­ent like Devon Jedams­ki, the team’s chief engi­neer, who brings Propul­sion and Air Vehi­cle expe­ri­ence from Northrop Grum­man Advanced Design, Rolls Royce, and the MIT Gas Tur­bine Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Whisper’s mis­sion is to deliv­er the next gen­er­a­tion of clean­er, qui­eter and more effi­cient thrust engines for drones and air­craft, hav­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly ques­tioned how elec­tric­i­ty should be con­vert­ed to thrust.

Whisper’s propul­sor is a next-gen­er­a­tion elec­tric duct­ed fan with every com­po­nent hav­ing been care­ful­ly con­sid­ered for ultra low noise and effi­cien­cy, unlike most designs for low noise by reduc­ing disk load­ing and tip speed, which sac­ri­fices effi­cien­cy.

Whis­per looks at each of these noise sources to min­imise their ampli­tude and tune their fre­quen­cies, some of which are ultra­son­ic and beyond the range of human hear­ing. The propul­sor has ultra low noise and more than 20 per­cent effi­cien­cy improve­ment com­pared to oth­er duct­ed fans. Keep­ing tip speeds low is the real trick Whis­per claims to have solved using advanced com­pu­ta­tion­al design tech­niques.

The elec­tric duct­ed fan (EDF) has been opti­mised for low noise and high effi­cien­cy using low tip speed at ultra­son­ic blade pas­sage fre­quen­cy. Whis­per has reg­is­tered intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for the propul­sor devel­oped over nine gen­er­a­tions of design, build, and test.

The com­pa­ny has devel­oped a com­pu­ta­tion­al frame­work that has val­i­dat­ed that it can fly a 55 lb drone at approx­i­mate­ly 200 feet and not be heard on the ground as it flies over in sus­tained thrust.

Whis­per claims it went from nap­kin sketch to fly­ing demon­stra­tor with­in eight months, hav­ing inde­pen­dent­ly reviewed and val­i­dat­ed its find­ings through six Depart­ment of Defense con­tracts and agree­ments worth $2.2 mil­lion in total with par­tic­i­pa­tion from the US Air Force, US Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, and the US Army. The com­pa­ny was found­ed by indus­try vet­er­ans, Mark Moore and Ian Vil­la, who were part of the Uber Ele­vate Team.