Grid Aero

Grid Aero is a company based in San Leandro, California, that develops autonomous, optionally attritable aircraft for contested environments. It was co-founded by chief executive Arthur Dubois, chief technology officer Chinmay Patel and chief commercial officer Brandon Florian. The company came out of stealth in August 2025 with 6 million US dollars in seed funding and raised a 20 million dollar Series A round in January 2026.

Its first aircraft, the Lifter Lite, is an uncrewed airlifter for contested logistics that the company calls the “pickup truck of the skies”. At the unveiling Grid Aero gave a target payload of about 1,000 to 8,000 pounds and named routes of around 1,500 miles, with figures still subject to change. The aircraft is meant to support the US Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept, and Grid Aero received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contract from AFWERX, the Air Force’s innovation arm. In January 2026 the prototype was in ground testing.

In November 2026 Grid Aero and Oshkosh Defense announced a partnership on design for manufacturability, production planning and supply chain optimisation, with the aim of building piston-powered Lifter aircraft at scale using manufacturing capacity in Wisconsin. Initial work focuses on production engineering and on demonstrating production-ready autonomous logistics aircraft to defence customers.