Arctus Aerospace secures $2.6 million from Version One Ventures, others

Unmanned aircraft manufacturer Arctus Aerospace has raised $2.6 million from early-stage VC firms such as Version One Ventures, South Park Commons, and gradCapital. The round also included angels such as Srinivas Narayan, OpenAI’s CTO of B2B applications, and Balaji Srinivasan, ex-CTO of Coinbase.

“We will be using this capital to build R&D … some of the money will also go into running the pilots,” founder Shreepoorna S Rao told ET.

Founded in 2024 by Rao at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, Arctus builds unmanned, high-altitude (~45,000 feet) aircrafts. These can carry 250 kg payloads with about five cameras for inspection of oil and gas installations, mapping, and insurance. The company currently charges $1 per square kilometre for its services.


The Bengaluru-based startup says it has a pilot running with one customer in India, and is in talks with companies in the US and Middle East.

Prior to this round, the company had raised nearly $1,00,000 from gradCapital and some angels.

With an R&D facility in Bengaluru, Arctus employs 10 engineers and manufactures 1.2-tonne aircrafts, the engines for which it sources from countries like Australia.

The company claims to replace expensive satellite data with their high-resolution data for 24 hour monitoring. ``We will be able to reduce costs by a factor of 10 for our customers who are currently using satellite data for inspection of their facilities,’’ said Rao.