San Francisco-based MightyFly today announced that it closed $10 million in funding, which it will use to scale production of autonomous hybrid eVTOL cargo aircraft. These MightyFly cargo drones claim that they can carry up to 500 pounds at distances of up to 1,000 miles.
After this funding round, the company has now raised $15 million total from investors including Draper Associates, At One Ventures, and 500 Global. Its aircraft is designed to carry 100–500 pounds across 600–1,000 miles with multiple stops per flight, all without requiring ground infrastructure like runways or dedicated landing pads.
That’s in contrast to most cargo drone companies, which are targeting short-range, last-mile delivery (think Zipline’s medical drops or Amazon’s suburban packages). We’re also starting to see companies operate long-haul fixed routes between established logistics hubs (think bringing replacement parts out to oil rigs in the middle of the ocean). MightyFly is pitching something in between those two options: middle-mile and last-mile B2B logistics that can flexibly route to multiple destinations in a single flight. Ultimately their service is intended to reach places traditional air cargo can’t efficiently serve.
MightyFly’s aircraft
So far, MightyFly has built three full-scale aircraft. With those, it’s completed over 400 autonomous flights.
Additionally, the company has obtained FAA Special Airworthiness Certificates covering multiple flight areas, corridors and airports, which is a necessary step toward commercial operations. Still, it’s a long way from the Part 135 air carrier certification or type certification that would enable truly routine scaled operations.
So what happens beyond those three drones it’s made? MightyFly says production rate “will scale in proportion to customer demand” but wouldn’t give a target for the next 24 months
The eVTOL design takes off again
As is the case with many delivery drones (including Wingcopter and Wing’s models), MightyFly uses a hybrid eVTOL design. As many delivery drone companies have found, pure electric drones are challenging because batteries can limit range (bigger, more powerful batteries require more weight which diminishes the return on what the bigger batter offers anyway). Meanwhile, traditional fixed-wing aircraft require runways, cutting into the flexibility of where drones can take off.
MightyFly claims their aircraft can execute multiple deliveries on a single route with autonomous loading and unloading capabilities.
Where the money is at
MightyFly has generated over $1 million in revenue to date. So far, its revenue has come entirely from defense and government contracts — not commercial logistics services.
The company also announced a $220 million, 20-year letter of intent for intra-island delivery and a recently signed $50 million, 5-year healthcare contract.
MightyFly said its expects to run its first fully revenue-generating commercial routes under routine operations sometime in 2027.
It will be genuinely impressive if they execute, but it also means we’re still at least a year away from seeing whether the business model actually works at scale.
MightyFly’s regulatory pathway
MightyFly currently operates under FAA Special Airworthiness Certificates, which allow testing and limited operations. These aren’t the same as the Part 135 air carrier authority needed for commercial cargo operations or the type certification that would enable mass production and routine flights.
The company said in an email with The Drone Girl that they’re “in discussions with the FAA and expect to share more details later this year.”
That’s the right place to be at this stage, but it’s also a reminder that regulatory approval remains one of the biggest gates between prototype and scalable business.
How does MightyFly compare to other cargo drone companies?
MightyFly claims there are “no other hybrid eVTOL cargo aircraft targeting up to 1,000-mile range and up to 500 pounds of payload.” That’s technically accurate if you hold all three variables constant (hybrid, 1,000 miles, 500 lbs), but it’s worth considering some of the other players in the space.
For example, Zipline operates at shorter range but has proven commercial scale with thousands of autonomous deliveries, primarily for medical logistics. At the beginning of 2026, Zipline announced it had raised $600 million in fresh investment, valuing the company at $7.6 billion — a figure that makes the $10 million MightyFly just raised look like pocket change. Zipline has said that money will be used to expand to at least four U.S. states in 2026, the company said.
And perhaps the most direct competitor to MightyFly in the long-range autonomous cargo space is Austin-based Skyways, which secured a $37 million U.S. Air Force AFWERX contract in June 2025 — nearly 4x the size of MightyFly’s total funding to date.
MightyFly will be an interesting one to watch though given its combination of range, payload and multi-stop capability. Most logistics drones are optimized for point-to-point or hub-and-spoke models. The ability to do 3–5 stops on a single 600-mile route would genuinely differentiate them if it works operationally.
As far as its cost per mile compared to regional air cargo or ground expedited shipping, MightyFly said their cost is “lower than regional air cargo” but wouldn’t share specifics.
The defense angle
Like Wingcopter’s recent pivot into defense manufacturing (which I covered earlier this week), MightyFly is explicitly positioning as a dual-use platform for both commercial supply chains and “mission-critical defense operations.”
All of their revenue to date comes from defense and government contracts, which suggests that’s where near-term traction actually exists. The $319 billion expedited-delivery market the company cites is overwhelmingly commercial, but defense budgets may be funding the development that eventually scales into commercial operations.
“Traditional logistics relies on capital and labor-intensive infrastructure that constrains speed, cost, and reliability” said Helen Lin, Partner at At One Ventures. “From early on we believed in MightyFly’s fundamentally advantageous solution which virtually eliminates labor — the largest cost driver for logistics operations today.”
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