Airlogix starts another round as drone production spreads abroad

Airlogix, a Ukrainian company that builds reconnaissance and strike drones for Ukrainian forces, has started another financing round as it pushes manufacturing beyond the country. CEO Vitalii Kolesnichenko said at the Resilience Conference in London that Airlogix had recently closed one round and begun the next, Resilience Media reported on Oct. 5. The amount, investors, valuation, terms and use of proceeds weren’t disclosed.

The company’s GOR system shows what that business looks like in the field. A crew can assemble the six-part aircraft without tools, launch it from a folding catapult and operate the drone and camera from separate control stations. Airlogix says GOR can remain airborne for four hours, transmit data as far as 80 kilometers and use backup navigation to obtain coordinates when GPS is jammed.

Strike drones make up the other side of the business. Airlogix and autonomy-software developer Auterion are producing and delivering Anubis and Seth X from Germany for heavy and medium-range missions. A human selects each target before the software automates the final flight. The companies said more than 5,000 systems would be supplied under a government contract that Resilience Media reported was worth $300 million.

Airlogix now has production in Germany and the United Kingdom. Resilience Media reported on Oct. 6 that the company had opened UK production, updating Kolesnichenko’s statement a day earlier that Airlogix was pursuing a manufacturing partnership there. He said Russian attacks had destroyed production sites and forced the company to split manufacturing among multiple locations. Airlogix is also pursuing a Canadian partnership, while Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States remain possible expansion markets.

Airlogix says it was founded in 2020 to make cargo drones and refocused on military and civilian unmanned aircraft because of the war. Kolesnichenko said concentrating operations in Ukraine makes some investors nervous and that the overseas network is intended to change that. The company hasn’t said what the new financing would fund.