Irish drone delivery startup Manna plots major U.S. expansion

Manna Aero, the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery startup, has long been a smaller player in the United States, but that is about to change. Founder and CEO Bobby Healy told TechCrunch that the company, fueled by the $50 million in venture capital it raised in April, announced Wednesday it is 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 already underway, and Healy expects manufacturing to begin there in about a year. Meanwhile, the company will focus on scaling its operations team to around 200 to 300 people over the next 12 months. Hiring at the factory will depend on growth outside Tulsa, and the company is assessing six other U.S. cities, with entry planned by the end of 2027.

The ultimate goal is to make Manna Aero a major U.S. drone delivery operator competing with Zipline, Amazon, and Google’s Wing. “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,” Healy said. “The United States has the market that everybody wants.”

Manna operates automated, remotely monitored drones that drop packages via a tether, similar to Wing and Zipline. Its hybrid business model is fundamentally delivery-as-a-service, charging per flight, with partnerships including DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats in Europe, as well as direct business partnerships and its own app.

While still headquartered in Ireland for R&D, admin, and manufacturing, Manna no longer operates drone delivery there. Last month, it pulled out citing a lack of planning regulations for scaling. Instead, the startup is channeling all capital and resources into the U.S. It hired former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as executive chair and president to drive expansion. Healy noted that Trump administration and FAA policies have given the industry a “turbo boost,” trickling down into investment. “A company like us wouldn’t have had any plans to grow in the United States until the environment was ready from a regulatory standpoint,” he said. “We’ve decided very clearly that now is the time to put every penny we have into the USA.”

Manna isn’t entirely new to the U.S. It began operating in 2023 in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone near Dallas, Texas, and has expanded into the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, with plans to continue scaling there over the next year.