3DR

What It Is

3DR, Inc. makes the electronics that fly a drone. Its flight controllers, GPS receivers, telemetry radios and interface boards go into other companies’ aircraft. It is based in Chula Vista, California, south of San Diego, and says its parts are designed, built and tested in California. Its chief executive is Anastasia Zakharova.

The boards run ArduPilot and PX4, the two main open-source flight-control programs. 3DR lists multirotors, fixed-wing aircraft, VTOL aircraft, rovers and boats among the vehicles they suit.

The name is older than the company. 3D Robotics was founded in 2009 by Chris Anderson, then editor of Wired, and Jordi Muñoz. It launched the Solo consumer drone in 2015 and gave up making drones in 2016 to sell mapping software. In 2021 Kitty Hawk, the air-taxi company backed by Larry Page, bought what was left. Kitty Hawk closed the next year.

Today’s 3DR says it is a different company from the one that sold 3DR products before 2023, and it does not support or guarantee those products. It has not said who owns it or how it came to use the name.

Key Products

Control Zero H7 OEM (part number M10059) is the main flight controller. The board weighs 3.5 grams and measures 34.7 by 20 millimetres. It carries three motion sensors, two CAN ports and eight motor outputs. 3DR’s documentation marks it “Blue UAS listed”.

CAN Node F303 (M10042) is an open-source board that puts a sensor on CAN, the wired network that links a drone’s GPS, compass and other parts to its flight controller. It uses ArduPilot’s driver library.

The range also includes the Control N1, a 2.4-gram flight controller that plugs into a carrier board. There are u-blox and Septentrio GPS modules, SiK telemetry radios, and the Quad Zero, a quadcopter kit under 250 grams built around the Control Zero. The store lists the United States as the country of origin for its flight controllers and the CAN node.

Business and Financial Position

3DR, Inc. is private. It has published no revenue, funding, owners or customers, and FlightBrief found no federal contract awarded to it.

Its public standing rests on the Pentagon’s Blue UAS lists, run by the Defense Contract Management Agency. The Cleared List carries a 3DR entry named “Autopilot”, dated 10 July 2026 and listed as an aircraft. Zakharova told FlightBrief on 27 October that the entry is the M10059 flight controller. Customers submitted it before 3DR itself was accepted onto the list, she said, and 3DR is correcting the description.

The separate Framework List of cleared components includes the 3DR CAN NODE, which she identified as the M10042. She said 3DR is submitting all its products.

Why It Matters

Section 848 of the FY2020 NDAA bars the Pentagon from buying drones whose flight controller, radio, camera or other data-handling parts come from China. A US builder needs those parts from somewhere else. A part on the Framework List has already been vetted, though it does not clear the aircraft it goes into. 3DR sells into exactly that gap: small open-source boards, made in California, for companies building their own aircraft.

Little else about the company is public. It has named no owner, figure or customer, and by its chief executive’s account its one Cleared List entry is described wrongly. When FlightBrief read the list on 27 October, the M10059 was still listed as an aircraft called “Autopilot”.