"The U.S. Army is bypassing some of venture capital's best-funded drone makers to buy technology from a little-known Utah manufacturer.
Salt Lake City-based Teal Drones has been selected as the winner of a military program to provide thousands of small surveillance drones, according to a regulatory filing and an Army document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The program will arm U.S. soldiers with backpack-size drones. The Army has said it needs around 11,700 drones for its Short Range Reconnaissance program, its largest effort yet to acquire small surveillance aircraft. That size of purchase could give Teal roughly $260 million in revenue in the coming years.
In a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Teal said its portable drones would be provided to Army infantry platoons to expand their reconnaissance abilities.
It is a victory for an underdog in the crowded U.S. small-drone market, which comprises billion-dollar California enterprises, low-profile founder-funded operations and penny-stock companies.
Teal, which was founded a decade ago by a teenage drone racer, didn't have the venture-capital clout and slick marketing of some of its bigger peers, and has almost no record as a defense supplier. It is owned by a Puerto Rico-based publicly traded holding company whose shares were trading below $1 this spring. Now, it is poised to become the recipient of potentially the largest-ever U.S. military contract for small uncrewed aircraft.
The company's 3-pound, folding, backpack-size drone can fly autonomously and is equipped with antijamming technology, said Teal executives. The Army declined to comment. The Defense Department says it wants to ramp up the use of drones, but hasn't bought many of them, making Teal's deal with the Army an exception.
The Pentagon accounts for less than 2% of all the commercial and government drone system sales each year in the U.S., according to the Defense Innovation Unit, a branch of the Defense Department that works with startups trying to sell to the Pentagon. "The Department of Defense does not have a holistic strategy for small drone systems," said David Michelson, autonomy portfolio director at the Defense Innovation Unit.
The Army's idea to equip soldiers with hand-held reconnaissance drones was conceived in 2009 after small, cheap drones were used as weapons by terrorist groups in the Middle East. It has taken 15 years for the Army to finalize the program.
American companies have also struggled to gain inroads selling to consumers and public safety groups as their drones are much more expensive and often technically inferior compared with Chinese-made competitors.
This hasn't deterred venture capitalists, who have poured billions of dollars into startups building drones they hope the Pentagon will buy. Silicon Valley's Skydio, which lost out to Teal on the Army program, has raised more than $700 million in venture capital.
Teal belongs to Red Cat Holdings, a holding corporation for a collection of drone manufacturers. It bought Teal in 2021 in a $14 million stock deal.
Teal's drone, called the Black Widow, can fly autonomously without GPS, using an internal map to navigate where it is going and locate its target, said Teal founder George Matus. It can fly about 40 minutes at a stretch without emitting a radio frequency, making it harder for an enemy to detect and jam, Matus said.
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Underdog Outmaneuvers Rivals
It is a remarkable evolution for Teal Dones, a hobbyist and drone-racing startup that founder George Matus began as a high-school sophomore.
The company was seeded with a couple hundred thousand dollars from a former San Francisco 49ers football player and a Peter Thiel-backed fellowship.
Like most American drone startups, Teal suffered as China's SZ DJI Technology devoured market share, making the business of selling drones to hobbyists and racers unsustainable. Matus winnowed his staff down to about 10 people and pivoted to defense.
In 2021, the Army passed over Teal in its first round of drone testing, eventually choosing Skydio, awarding it an order of around $29 million.
After soldiers ran into technical challenges with Skydio's drones, Teal re-emerged as a contender for the Army's program in 2022, ultimately beating out Skydio." [1]
1. U.S. News: Army to Buy Backpack-Size Drones For Surveillance From Small Maker. Somerville, Heather; Forrest, Brett. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Nov 2024: A.3.
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