Flytrex raises $40M in Series C funding for drone delivery

Flytrex’s drones deliver food from restaurants and grocery stores to backyards. | Credit: Flytrex

Flytrex raised $40 million in Series C funding. In total, it’s raised $60 million since its founding in 2013. Flytrex delivers food and groceries to your backyard with it delivery drones. Its focus is delivering food to suburban communities.

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Flytrex has operated its drone delivery service since 2017 in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2020, it began deliveries in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Since then, the drone company has expanded to deliver in Raeford and Holly Springs, North Carolina. In North Carolina, Flytrex was granted a waiver to operate its drones above people. Flytrex is conducting all flights within line of sight to maintain high safety standards.

Flytrex plans to use its funding to further expand in the U.S., and to advance its partnerships with retailers and quick-service restaurants. The company says its demand has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since February 2021, Flytrex claims its operations have increased tenfold.

“On-demand drone delivery has skyrocketed since the pandemic began and is becoming much more mainstream, much faster than expected,” said Yariv Bash, CEO and co-founder of Flytrex. “We’re excited to continue working with the FAA, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and others to bring swift, affordable and sustainable on-demand drone delivery to more partners, communities and consumers across the country.”

For the last two years, Flytrex has been working with the Icelandic Transportation Authority to further commercial drone deliveries in Reykjavik. It is also part of the Federal Aviation Administration UAS Integration Pilot Program, and worked with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to standardize backyard drone delivery.

The funding came primarily from BRM group, as well as from Our Crowd and Lukasz Gadowski, founder and chairman of Delivery Hero. BRM group, an Israeli venture capital fund, invested in GigaSpaces Technologies, an in-memory computing platform earlier this month.

In previous rounds of funding, Flytrex received funding from Benhamou Global Ventures, btov and BackBone Ventures.