Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Founder of DroneXL.co, where he covers all drone-related news, DJI rumors and writes drone reviews, and of EVXL.co, for all electric vehicle news. Haye can be reached at haye @ dronexl.co or @hayekesteloo. Also on LinkedIn, Muck Rack, Instagram and YouTube.
DJI and SkyPixel announced the winners of the 11th Annual SkyPixel Photo and Video Contest on April 27, naming “Africa Unseen” by ellisvanjason as the Annual Best Video in the Aerial Category. Slovak photographer Filip Hrebenda won the Annual Best Photo prize for “The Gate.” AYANG took Annual Best Video in the Handheld Category for…
Joby Aviation completed New York City’s first point-to-point electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi demonstration flights this past weekend, the company announced this morning. The aircraft, tail number N545JX, departed John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and landed across Manhattan’s existing heliport network. Joby is calling the campaign ‘week-long’ in its release headlin
Beijing's near-total drone ban takes effect May 1 with an April 30 registration deadline, hitting DJI as it fights a $1.56B FCC loss in US court.
Security researcher Konrad Iturbe has identified the VooMax Breeze 8K drone selling on Amazon as a rebrand of a drone already tied to Fikaxo Technology Inc., one of the suspected DJI shell companies DroneXL reported on in September 2025. Iturbe, who runs the automated bot that scans FCC filings for DJI’s proprietary OcuSync frequency signatures,…
A new drone brand called VooMax has appeared on Amazon with a $649 sub-250-gram drone whose spec sheet reads like a photocopy of the DJI Lito X1 that launched globally this morning. The listing, for the VooMax Breeze Standard Kit, offers a 1/1.32-inch CMOS sensor, f/1.7 aperture, 4K/60fps HDR video, forward-facing LiDAR, omnidirectional obstacle sensing,…
Skydio CEO Adam Bry confirms DJI tried to acquire the company in 2014. The rejected deal now anchors the American drone industry against Chinese competitors.
Skydio closed a $110 million Series F on Thursday at a $4.4 billion post-money valuation, with CEO Adam Bry framing the modest raise as the real headline. The San Mateo drone maker was oversubscribed. Existing investors wanted to put in substantially more. Bry turned most of them down. “The most significant fact in our Series…
Fifteen agricultural spray drones were stolen from a New Jersey location last month in what the FBI is treating as a sophisticated, possibly coordinated theft, according to reporting by national security journalists Jack Murphy and Sean D. Naylor at The High Side. The case is unsolved. Retired FBI agent Steve Lazarus told the outlet the…
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