Santa Clara–based long-endurance drone builder SiFly Aviation has closed a $20 million Series A led by Shield Capital, with participation from Qudit, BBK Capital, Alumni Ventures and other investors. The financing will accelerate production of SiFly's record-setting Q12 aircraft, expand a U.S. manufacturing and supply-chain footprint, and fund field validation of the company's DronePort multi-drone infrastructure platform.
A Guinness-record airframe built for real-world missions
The Q12 is engineered to combine the agility, precision hover and vertical takeoff of a multirotor with the range, speed and efficiency of a fixed-wing aircraft. In validation testing the drone has completed thousands of flights and holds a Guinness World Record for the longest flight by an electric multirotor in its weight class, at three hours, 11 minutes and 54 seconds. It carries payloads of up to 10 pounds, tops out at 60 mph and covers a 90-mile range — four to five times longer, and up to 10 times farther, than leading enterprise multirotors.
Public safety, utilities and agriculture in the crosshairs
"Most multirotor drones were designed for short flights close to the operator," founder and CEO Brian Hinman said in a statement. "This financing allows us to scale production, fulfill our growing backlog and support successful customer deployments." Target markets include public safety agencies running Drone-as-First-Responder programs, utilities that need to inspect more miles per flight, and agricultural operators covering more acres with fewer aircraft.
NDAA compliance and a U.S. supply chain
SiFly is deliberately targeting NDAA-compliant, U.S.-built alternatives to Chinese enterprise drones as Washington tightens supply-chain requirements. Shield Capital partner Ray Rothrock — a veteran national-security investor — cast the round as a bet on productivity per aircraft. "For drone operators, greater endurance translates into faster response, broader coverage and lower cost per mission," he said. The Series A follows a wave of policy support for U.S. drone manufacturers, from the Pentagon's $820M PDW loan commitment to XTEND's Drone Dominance selection.
Next up: DronePort and initial deliveries
Alongside Q12 production, SiFly will invest in its DronePort platform, an infrastructure system that runs regional, multi-drone operations from a single console and promises up to 5x the coverage of leading Drone-in-a-Box systems at up to 10x lower cost. First revenue-generating deliveries of the Q12 are targeted for the first quarter of 2027.
Reporting based on coverage from PR Newswire, DroneLife and DroneDJ.