GoKawiilManna Aero, the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery startup, has been a smaller player in the United States. Founder and CEO Bobby Healy told TechCrunch that’s about to change.
The startup, fueled by the $50 million in venture capital it raised in April, said Wednesday that it’s setting up a U.S. operations and manufacturing center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will employ about 1,000 people over the next several years. Construction on the factory is underway and Healy expects manufacturing to begin there in about a year.
As construction continues, the company will focus on scaling its operations team to about 200 to 300 people over the next 12 months, according to Healy. The pace of hiring at the factory will depend on the rate of growth outside of Tulsa, he said, noting that the company is assessing six other U.S. cities. If all goes well, Manna will start entering those cities by the end of 2027.
The end goal is to turn Manna Aero into a major U.S. drone delivery operator that competes with Zipline, Amazon, and Google’s Wing, among others.
“It’s just the size of the market here, consumer behavior, and the fact that the aggregators (DoorDash, Uber Eats) have consolidated the market so well, and they’re so well run,” Healy said, explaining the U.S. expansion. “The United States has the market that everybody wants.”
Image Credits:Manna Aero
Manna operates automated, remotely monitored drones that don’t land. Instead, they lower the package on a tether, the same technique used by Wing and Zipline. Manna has a hybrid business model. It is fundamentally a delivery-as-a-service company that charges per flight. But it has different ways of achieving that, including through partnerships with DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats in Europe as well as direct partnerships with businesses and its own consumer-facing app.
Manna is still headquartered in Ireland, where its R&D, administrative, and manufacturing operations are based. But it no longer operates drone delivery in the country; Manna pulled back its drone delivery operations last month citing a lack of planning regulations that would allow it to scale there.
Instead, the startup is putting its capital and resources into the United States. The company hired former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as its executive chair and president to drive the expansion.
Healy said the Trump administration’s and the FAA’s policies have given the industry a “turbo boost” in the country.
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