Ulrich Amberg is stepping down as chief executive of SwissDrones after more than six years, and the Swiss uncrewed helicopter maker is not replacing him with one person. It is dividing the job among three.

Amberg announced his own departure on LinkedIn over the weekend, not in a company press release. He wrote that he is leaving to take on a new challenge and said more would follow, without naming where he is going. Lukas Obrist, already chief technology officer, takes the manufacturing side. Larry Berkin leads a newly formed entity called Xplorate Group, Inc. Ronnie Fahy keeps running Xplorate Pacific, the Australian operator that flies the aircraft.

The timing is the part worth sitting with. The announcement lands three weeks after SwissDrones and its Australian subsidiary announced a US market entry, and one day before Commercial UAV Expo opens in Las Vegas, where Berkin is on the program. I will be at that show this week.

Amberg Spent Six Years Turning BVLOS Approvals Into A Business

Amberg first engaged SwissDrones as a strategy consultant in 2018, then took the chief executive job the following year alongside a personal equity investment. He came from KPMG, where he had been a partner leading consulting and IT advisory work, with a computer science degree behind that.

In his post he describes what changed on his watch: long-range BVLOS flight with large uncrewed helicopters in regulated airspace was, in his words, “science fiction” when he started. That is a fair description of 2019. Flying a turbine-powered 191-pound (87-kilogram) rotorcraft beyond visual line of sight, over other people’s infrastructure, with a civil aviation authority’s blessing, was a demonstration project almost everywhere. It is now a repeat commercial service in Australia, where CASA has moved faster than the FAA on broad-area BVLOS approvals.

He also says the team grew five times over during that period. SwissDrones was founded in 2013, is headquartered in Zurich and manufactures in Buchs.

Three Executives Divide The Job Amberg Held Alone

Three names carry the company forward. Lukas Obrist, already chief technology officer, oversees the OEM side that builds the aircraft. Larry Berkin leads the newly formed Xplorate Group, Inc. Ronnie Fahy stays in charge of Xplorate Pacific, the Australian flight operator.

Obrist is not a caretaker appointment. He has been at SwissDrones since 2018, served as interim CEO before Amberg arrived, and is the company’s public voice on the SD120, the next-generation uncrewed helicopter now in development. That aircraft is being engineered toward SAIL IV under Europe’s Specific Operations Risk Assessment framework, which is an operational risk classification rather than a type certificate.

Berkin’s title is worth a second look. Amberg calls Xplorate Group “newly formed,” but Berkin was already being quoted as Group CEO in the August 7 announcement, and his Commercial UAV Expo speaker page describes Xplorate Group, Inc. as an industrial infrastructure intelligence company backed by SwissDrones engineering and Xplorate Pacific operations. The structure was in the open before the CEO transition was.

What nobody has said is whether the SwissDrones AG chief executive seat now sits empty, is held on an interim basis, or has been folded into the group. Amberg’s post assigns Obrist “the OEM part of the business” and stops there. SwissDrones has published no statement on the change, and I found no filing or release naming a successor. For a company selling aviation-grade hardware into regulated markets, where organizational accountability is part of the safety case, that gap is not cosmetic.

The Exit Lands Three Weeks Into A US Market Push

SwissDrones and Xplorate Pacific announced their US expansion on August 7, three weeks before Amberg’s post. The plan targets pipelines and powerlines across long linear corridors, run program by program under whatever Federal Aviation Administration approvals each mission can get today. There is no blanket authorization behind it.

The August 7 release was datelined San Francisco, Zurich and Perth, which tells you where the center of gravity is heading. Berkin’s pitch is that hardware alone does not sell: “Industrial customers need more than an aircraft.” The package on offer is the SDO 50 plus trained flight crews, safety cases, sensor integration and data delivery, sold as a service rather than a fleet purchase.

The proof point is Queensland, where Xplorate Pacific runs recurring commercial BVLOS inspection flights along a corridor of roughly 340 miles (550 kilometers). Investors behind the group include Chevron Technology Ventures, DiamondStream Partners, Longbow Capital and Ingleside Investors, which is an energy-heavy cap table pointed at exactly the customers the US expansion is chasing.

Calling August 7 a US entry undersells what was already there. SwissDrones aircraft have been flying American infrastructure since early 2025, when Southern Company became the first US utility to win an FAA Part 91 exemption for BVLOS operations, flying the SDO 50 through a partnership with Phoenix Air Unmanned. The second-largest energy provider in the country was using this hardware on its grid while the FAA rule was still a proposal. What changed this month is the sales structure, not the airspace access.

There is real money moving in the same direction. The US Department of Transportation has forecast $9 million in drone infrastructure inspection grants for fiscal 2026, with applications due in November. Large uncrewed rotorcraft are also no longer exotic in defense and public safety procurement, as the Royal Navy’s Proteus program shows.

Part 108 Delay Caps What Xplorate Group Can Sell In America

The final Part 108 rule has sat at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs since July 10, 2026, its last stop before publication. Until it lands, long-range uncrewed inspection in the United States runs on waivers and exemptions, one approval at a time.

OIRA’s own page carried a July target, and that came and went. Review there can run 90 days, which pushes realistic publication into late 2026 or into 2027. The FAA has now missed the January 2026 statutory deadline set by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 and the 240-day clock from the June 2025 executive order. DroneXL has covered the right-of-way fight that helped stall it and the argument that the delay is a policy choice rather than a backlog.

For a company whose entire value proposition is regulatory competence, that delay is not only an obstacle. It is also the moat. If routine BVLOS were already legal, an American operator with a fleet of quadcopters could go after some of this work. It is not, so the buyer needs somebody who can build a safety case, and that is what Xplorate Group is selling.

DroneXL’s Take

A company that splits one CEO job into three roles at the moment it enters the biggest market in the world is telling you something, and I do not think it is weakness. I think it is a holding company forming around an aircraft manufacturer.

Look at what each piece now does. Obrist builds airframes in Switzerland. Fahy flies them in Australia. Berkin sells outcomes to American energy companies from San Francisco. That is not one business with three managers, it is three businesses that happen to share a rotor. Amberg’s departure reads less like a chief executive being pushed and more like a man who finished the job he was hired for in 2019, which was turning a promising Swiss airframe into a company with global approvals, and handing over to people who will do something structurally different with it.

The Southern Company exemption is the tell. SwissDrones did not need Part 108 to get its aircraft over an American grid, it needed a utility willing to petition the FAA and a US operating partner willing to hold the certificate. That is a services problem wearing a hardware costume, and you do not solve it from Zurich.

I will concede the obvious counterpoint. Leadership churn three weeks into a market entry is the kind of thing that spooks a utility procurement team, and “more on that soon” is a phrase that usually means the next role was not signed when the post went up. If the SwissDrones CEO seat stays visibly vacant through the fall, that concern gets legitimate.

What I keep coming back to is how much of this hinges on a rule sitting in a review office. Xplorate Group’s entire American pitch is that it can navigate a system nobody else wants to navigate. That is a good business while Part 108 sits at OIRA and a much more crowded one the day it publishes. Berkin speaks Wednesday morning at Commercial UAV Expo on building drone programs that hold up in energy and utilities. That session is the first chance to ask what a group structure means for a customer signing a multi-year inspection contract, and whether anyone is running SwissDrones AG itself. I intend to ask.

Sources: Ulrich Amberg on LinkedIn, GlobeNewswire, Commercial UAV Expo, Commercial UAV News, Utility Dive

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.