Elroy Air
Elroy Air, a San Francisco company, builds Chaparral, an autonomous hybrid-electric vertical take-off cargo aircraft that needs no runway or pilot. It is going public through a merger with Columbus Circle Capital Corp II.
Founded in 2016 and led by Dr Andrew Clare, it has 51 to 200 staff. Chaparral's autonomy covers the whole mission, including navigation without GPS and unattended delivery. It made its first autonomous point-to-point cargo delivery in December 2025, flew uncrewed under the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program in 2026 and won a 46 million US dollar US Army development contract in August 2026. The merger values it at 800 million US dollars before new money, with Lockheed Martin Ventures among investors, and is expected to close in late 2026.
Bristow holds 15 deposit-backed delivery slots and LCI up to 40. A FedEx middle-mile test agreement announced in 2022 has no evidence of being carried out.
No verified deployments yet
Elroy Air is profiled in the companies register, but no deployment has been verified against published evidence. Records are added as evidence is reviewed and graded.
Products & Solutions
1 productChaparral
The Chaparral is an autonomous, hybrid-electric, vertical takeoff and landing (hVTOL) cargo aircraft developed by Elroy Air for middle-mile logistics, military resupply, and humanitarian delivery.
Eliminates the need for runways, pilots, and charging infrastructure for middle-mile cargo delivery; extends express shipping to rural, remote, austere, and contested environments where road transport is slow or unavailable and crewed aviation is expensive or high-risk.
- Full end-to-end autonomy, autonomous ground navigation, cargo pod retrieval, taxi, takeoff, flight, and delivery
- Hybrid-electric powertrain (turbogenerator-based) enabling long-range flight without reliance on charging infrastructure
- Eight vertical lift fans and four forward propulsors for eVTOL transition flight (lift + cruise configuration)
- Modular, swappable external cargo pod system, pods pre-loaded by ground personnel and autonomously retrieved and deposited by aircraft
6 more features
- Full carbon composite airframe
- Designed to fit inside a 40-foot shipping container or C-130/C-17 military cargo aircraft for rapid global deployment
- Can be remotely piloted as fallback to comply with civil aviation authority requirements
- Patent-pending power management IP
- Up to 4x reduction in power demand during forward cruise flight compared to vertical hover
- Onboard sense-and-compute for unattended ground logistics operations
Technical specifications (8)
- Payload capacity: 300 lb (136 kg) design target (C1 demonstrated up to 500 lb / 227 kg at unveil)
- Range: 300 miles (480 km)
- Max takeoff weight: 1,215 lb (551 kg)
- Maximum demonstrated speed: 70 mph (August 2025 transition flights)
- Propulsion: 8 vertical electric rotors + 4 forward electric propulsors + turbogenerator hybrid-electric powertrain
- Airframe: Full carbon composite, tandem-wing high-wing configuration
- December 2025 first A-to-B delivery: 213 lb cargo over 2.6 miles at approximately 60 mph
- September 2025 demonstration: multiple autonomous 25-mile flights
- No FAA type certificate as of early 2026, FAA certification is a long-term goal
- Selected for USDOT eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) under President Trump's Unleashing American Drone Dominance Executive Order (announced March 2026)
- Phase 3 SBIR contract with USAF Agility Prime programme (awarded 2021)
- USAF Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) award Q4 2021 ($1.7M additional contract value)
- Validated by Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF)
- Demonstrated at USAF Mobility Guardian 2023 exercise, Travis Air Force Base
Profile data from the Aerostack companies register; deployment records from the verified register. Evidence grades: T1 first-party confirmation, T2 credible reporting. See Our approach for how records are graded.