Pyka is an autonomous electric aviation startup that developed the lightweight Pelican aircraft for automated crop-dusting and a cargo variant. The Pelican was designed to autonomously spray crops and the cargo version targets short inter-island commerce, carrying about 400 pounds of cargo on daily "puddle jump" routes. The company briefly worked on a passenger plane but shifted focus to cargo and industrial use while keeping passenger ambitions as a long-term goal. Pyka has attracted defense interest, is working with Sierra Nevada on a mil-spec Rumrunner electronic configuration, and says the majority of Pelican Cargo aircraft delivered and income are related to defense partners at this point. High regulatory hurdles and aviation risk have informed its strategy of pursuing commercial industrial use cases and defense partnerships to subsidize R&D. The new funding will be used to scale manufacturing after years of iterating the design based on customer feedback. Founded in 2019, Pyka intends to use data advantage and cash flow from industrial deployments to eventually pursue passenger aircraft development. Pyka builds the Pelican, an autonomous electric small aircraft initially designed for agricultural spraying that can take off, perform complex spray patterns and land entirely autonomously. The company has produced seven Pelicans and five smaller Egrets, with three Egrets in active use in Latin America, and is moving toward type certification in the U.S. and Brazil. The latest Pelican design increases wing size, structural strength, battery capacity and payload, and adds redundancy features—four motors, three elevators, a parachute and a backup flight-control unit—to eliminate single points of failure. Pyka is adapting the Pelican into a cargo variant with a larger forward fuselage, a 400-pound payload capacity and a range of up to 200 miles, and has switched from bespoke high‑power‑density batteries to automotive cells. The company plans first flight of the Pelican Cargo in about four months and intends to deliver the first plane to a tropical deployment before year-end. Financially, Pyka raised a $37 million Series A to scale manufacturing and intends to use proceeds to boost production capacity to build roughly one Pelican per month. Pyka builds a winged, pilotless electric aircraft called the Egret designed to spray pesticides and other chemicals over large fields. The craft is driven by three propellers, houses most of its interior as payload and batteries, and includes an onboard sensing suite and flight computer. The Egret can carry roughly 450 pounds, take off or land on a 150-foot stretch of flat land, and spray about 100 acres per hour. Pyka says it is the only company with a commercially approved large autonomous electric aircraft, though wider deployment faces regulatory hurdles like air-traffic integration and more robust sense-and-avoid systems. The Egret has flown thousands of miles at test farms that pay for access; Pyka declined to comment on its business model, customers, or revenues. The founding team includes Michael Norcia, Chuma Ogunwole, Kyle Moore, and Nathan White.

Total raised

$88M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Sep 2024