Airbound has raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Greenoaks to expand its autonomous aircraft platform and pursue a vision of making aerial transportation cheaper than conventional ground-based logistics. DoorDash, Lightspeed India, Lachy Groom and Humba Ventures also participated in the financing.
Airbound is developing lightweight autonomous aircraft designed around a core economic thesis: conventional aviation is expensive in part because much of an aircraft’s weight is dedicated to the aircraft itself rather than the payload being transported.
The company is attempting to redesign that equation by building aircraft that can move goods at sufficiently low cost to compete with trucks and other forms of ground transportation.
Airbound ultimately envisions fleets containing thousands of autonomous aircraft replacing portions of conventional road-based logistics infrastructure.
The company has already completed more than 13,000 autonomous flights.
Airbound is also scaling operations with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh toward a goal of 10,000 flights per day.
That deployment could provide an important test of whether autonomous aerial logistics can operate economically at significantly greater scale rather than remaining limited to pilots and small commercial programs.
Airbound is initially focused on moving goods, where autonomous aircraft can potentially eliminate drivers and avoid traffic while operating across more direct routes.
The company’s longer-term ambition extends beyond logistics.
Airbound said it sees goods transportation as the first major application for its technology, with passenger transportation potentially following as the platform and economics develop.
The $37 million Series A gives Airbound additional capital to scale its aircraft technology and commercial deployments as it works toward making flight a lower-cost transportation option.
KEY QUOTE:
“Flying isn’t expensive because of the air, it’s expensive because most of the weight we fly is the aircraft itself. Less than a third goes into moving the thing you care about. We’re reinventing the aircraft to make flying the cheapest way to move anything on earth. Where a fleet of a thousand drones replaces trucks. Where flying to your destination is cheaper than taking the bus.”
“This isn’t a someday claim. We’ve flown 13,000+ autonomous flights, and we’re scaling with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh toward 10,000 flights a day. Logistics move to the air first, people next.”
Airbound Statement
