Poseidon Aerospace raises $60 million Series A to build unmanned cargo aircraft

Poseidon Aerospace, a startup focused on developing and operating unmanned cargo aircraft, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $60 million Series A financing. The round was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from JAWS, G Squared, Hanwha Asset Management USA, Starship Ventures, Drover Ventures, Draper Associates, and other investors.

Poseidon Aerospace is building the future of air logistics with unmanned cargo aircraft designed from the ground up around payload, cost and utilisation. The company is initially focused on two markets: regional commercial air cargo and contested logistics for defence. By applying the same aircraft platform and operating model across both markets, Poseidon intends to make commercial freight more efficient while strengthening the resilience and flexibility of defence supply chains.

The new capital will be used to bring Poseidon's initial full-scale aircraft through its flight-test campaign, establish and scale the company's first production line, expand its engineering and operations teams, and continue delivering against customer programmes across commercial logistics and defence.

"Poseidon exists to bring about the future of air cargo and logistics," said David Zagaynov, Co-Founder and CEO. "Most aircraft are designed first around the people flying them and then adapted to carry cargo. We are starting with a different question: How would you design an aircraft if its only purpose were to move payload as efficiently and reliably as possible? We are building unmanned cargo planes from the ground up, designed and purpose-built for logistics with every modern innovation."

An aircraft designed around cargo

Poseidon's flagship aircraft, Egret, is an unmanned regional freighter designed to carry multiple tons of payload at a fraction of the operating cost of regional cargo aircraft flying today.

Poseidon expects to conduct Egret's first uncrewed flight by the end of 2026. The full-scale aircraft has an approximately 50-foot wingspan. In 2025, the company successfully developed and flew Seagull, a quarter-scale demonstrator used to validate key elements of the aircraft's design and control architecture.

Poseidon plans to operate its own regional commercial cargo service rather than sell aircraft to existing carriers. The company's unmanned operating model is designed to increase aircraft utilisation, reduce operating costs and enable routes to be adjusted as customer demand changes.

Without flight schedules constrained by where pilots are based or how many hours a crew can fly, Poseidon aircraft could support more dynamic point-to-point operations and spend less time sitting idle. This model is intended to complement existing cargo networks by serving regional, remote and underserved routes where conventional air service is limited or uneconomic.

"Air cargo is one of the world's most important pieces of infrastructure, yet the aircraft and operating models behind it have changed remarkably little," said Schuster Tanger, Co-Founder and Partner at TQ Ventures. "David, Parker and the Poseidon team are taking a disciplined, first-principles approach: use proven technologies where they work, redesign the aircraft around payload and build an operating model that can deliver lower costs and higher utilisation. We believe Poseidon can build critical logistics infrastructure for both commercial customers and national security."