FAA
FAA Air Traffic COO Tells XPONENTIAL: ‘We See Drones As Aircraft, Operators As Pilots’
FAA ATO COO McIntosh at XPONENTIAL Detroit: drones treated as aircraft, operators as pilots; new radar data sharing test program coming in two weeks.
Industry
Funding rounds, partnerships, layoffs, and the market math underneath the drone headlines.
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Department of Defense
HYFIX Launches U.S.-Made H1P Chip Module for Small Drones
HYFIX Spatial Intelligence is rolling out its H1P Positioning, Navigation, and Open-Compute Module for small unmanned systems, with samples and evaluation kits available immediately. The Santa Clara, California company is showcasing the H1P at AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2026 in Detroit this week, booth 34005. It’s the first product built on the company’s H1 Autonomous Systems Chip,…
United States
North Las Vegas Teens Train for Drone Pilot Careers
A group of ninth and tenth graders at a North Las Vegas charter school are spending their electives doing something most drone enthusiasts wish they’d started earlier: flying, crashing, troubleshooting, and doing it again. They’re not playing. They have a certification to chase, as Las Vegas Sun reported. The Class That Started With Code Richard…
China
China Flies First Bamboo-Composite UAV in Tianjin
A Chinese research team has flown what it calls the world’s first fixed-wing drone built largely from bamboo. The tilt-rotor UAV took off from a field in Tianjin, climbed, transitioned to forward flight, and came back down on its own rotors, as reported by China Daily. More than a quarter of its airframe is made…
Russia
European Commission Opens EU Aviation Strategy Consultation, And Drone Operators Have Until May 21 To Weigh In
European Commission opens consultation on new EU Aviation and Aeronautics Strategy through May 21, 2026. Drones, counter-UAS, anti-jamming all in scope.
Skydio
Skydio Raises $110M Series F At $4.4B Valuation, And The CEO Says The Small Size Is The Point
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…
Anduril
FAA Picks Palantir, Thales, and Airspace Intelligence to Build AI That Predicts Flight Conflicts Two Hours Out
The Federal Aviation Administration is quietly developing an AI-powered air traffic management tool that would let controllers deconflict flight paths up to two hours before a collision risk emerges, according to reporting from The Air Current published April 17, 2026. The program is called Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART. Three companies are…
DJI
Hyfix Raised $15M to Out-Engineer DJI. Now Comes the Hard Part
A Santa Clara startup called Hyfix Spatial Intelligence just pulled in $15 million to build an American-designed system-on-a-chip that folds flight control, high-precision positioning, secure communications, and onboard compute into a single piece of U.S.-manufactured silicon. Craft Ventures led the round. The pitch is that this will be the American brain for drones and robots…
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