Manna Aero

Manna Aero

Manna Aero is an Irish drone delivery company headquartered in Dublin. It built its record flying beyond visual line of sight in Ireland, Finland and Texas, then paused all Irish deliveries on 19 June 2026, citing planning refusals by local councils. In July it named Tulsa, Oklahoma its US operations and manufacturing base; its first Tulsa base opened on 12 August and two more followed in October. On 23 October 2026 the FCC exempted its 383.2 drone, held by Manna Drones Delivery, Inc., from the Covered List under a Department of War conditional approval tied to an onshoring plan. It delivers consumer goods, food, and pharmacy products directly to residential addresses, typically within three minutes of order placement. The company targets suburban and peri-urban markets where delivery density is sufficient to support per-flight unit economics.

Key Products

Manna Drone: Proprietary fixed-wing hybrid delivery aircraft designed for BVLOS operation, capable of carrying packages up to approximately 1.5 kg. The aircraft is not sold commercially - it is operated exclusively by Manna as part of its service.

Manna Platform: End-to-end delivery operations software covering order intake, flight planning, airspace deconfliction, and landing zone management.

Business and Funding

Manna is private. It announced a $50 million Series B in March 2026, led by ARK Invest together with Schooner Capital, with participation from existing investors including Coca-Cola HBC, Molten Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and Tapestry. The round brought total funding to $110 million.

The company says it has completed more than 250,000 regulated commercial flights across its networks in Ireland, Finland and Texas. It said the new funding would support up to 40 new bases in the United States and around 400 new jobs across Ireland and the US. Those are company statements about planned expansion, not completed openings. Manna also says its operations achieve positive unit economics; it is one of the few drone delivery operators to make that claim publicly, and the underlying figures are not published.

Why It Matters

Manna made almost 400,000 deliveries by its own count to October 2026, most of them in Ireland, and then had to stop flying there: Irish councils refused its sites and there is no national framework for drone delivery. Its growth now depends on the US, where it competes with Wing and Zipline and where a foreign-built aircraft needs an exemption from the FCC’s Covered List. That exemption holds only while Manna keeps to its plan to move production to the US; its Tulsa factory was under construction in July, and Manna has not said where its first US-built aircraft are made. Its positive unit economics claim has no published figures behind it.