It’s not about the funding round drone deliveries haven’t been blocked by fancy aircraft. What has been hard to achieve all along was developing a reliable delivery system out of a short demonstration flight, something that can withstand the regulatory, local scrutiny, and economic hurdles.
This is precisely what Manna seeks to prove with this new investment round. Manna, a delivery startup based in Ireland, announced it has raised a series B of $50 million, which brings the total funding to $110 million. In addition, the startup claims to be ready to develop up to 40 operating bases across the United States. This is an aggressive approach for the industry as a whole because many companies still struggle to prove the ability to deliver a few test flights without demonstrating a routine and viable system.
The advantage of Manna does not consist in inventing something novel. Instead, it relies on the amount of time it managed to spend flying. According to the company, it flew over 250 thousand commercial UAVs in several countries including Ireland, Finland, and Texas. Among the items delivered via drones, there were food, coffee, medical supplies, books, and clothes. The most valuable thing gained as a result of these flights lies in learning how to operate a drone in order to make launch, recovery, payload release, battery replacement, routing, etc. efficient and safe. The latter factor becomes crucial because consumer drone delivery is an industry characterized by bold statements but few examples of dense operations.
One of the major advantages offered by Manna is fast delivery. The company’s representatives say that many of the orders are being delivered within minutes. The aircraft deliver packages to gardens and driveways, and do not land. The separate profile described how aircraft flew at the height of 165 to 215 feet with a maximum payload weight of 4 kg. Average delivery time was 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
But speed is only one of the key factors here. In general, this is a regulatory change. Indeed, in 2025, the FAA released its Part 108 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for BVLOS operation. In other words, FAA introduced a framework that should help BVLOS flights go beyond individual exceptions and be generally legalized. As we see, the importance of this document for companies specializing in drone delivery is enormous. And that is why it becomes clear why FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford paid his visit to Manna in Ireland to learn how the company’s system operates in different environments.
However, scale brings its issues. In North Texas, Manna experienced complaints regarding noise pollution and invasion of privacy as a result of drone flying over the land. In fact, it became a problem industry wide because, as long as companies do not prove to the locals that the flights are safe and sound and do not interfere with people’s lives, it will be quite difficult to expand in a certain area. Thus, the winners of the competition will be companies that demonstrate not only the ability to fly but also their willingness to make a compromise between their needs and those of locals.
The company demonstrates its ability to solve this issue via the description of its aircraft. In particular, recently, the company presented the aircraft equipped with triple redundant safety systems, eight motor pods, automated parachute deployment, and even acoustic tuning designed to reduce the high frequency noise typical for small consumer drones.
Finally, Manna decided to broaden its scope a bit. Apart from its own services, the company announced that it partnered with Uber Eats. Apart from that, there are Deliveroo, Just Eat, and Door Dash with which Manna has worked before. This means that drone delivery is becoming an essential element of apps where it remains unnoticed and serves as invisible infrastructure of the retail business.