Flytrex, the autonomous drone supply startup, is betting {that a} big-name rent might help it lastly break by means of. The corporate has tapped former Waze CEO and Google vice chairman Noam Bardin as govt chairman, a transfer that would give the startup credibility at a second when the trade faces each new alternatives and longstanding challenges.
Bardin, who turned Waze right into a navigation platform with greater than 150 million month-to-month customers earlier than its $1.1 billion sale to Google, is stepping in. Bardin joins Flytrex simply because it secured a key regulatory win: the FAA just lately granted the corporate Past Visible Line of Sight (BVLOS) approval. That’s key in successfully opening the door for its drones to function in 37 of the biggest metro areas within the U.S. — a possible attain of greater than 100 million folks.
“That is concerning the customers, not the expertise,” Bardin mentioned in an interview with The Drone Lady. “Customers don’t care about expertise, they care concerning the service.”
He mentioned Flytrex will first scale in Dallas-Fort Price, the place it already operates, with the aim of including dozens of recent websites this 12 months and protecting the whole metro space inside 12 months.
Flying excessive alongside Wing and Zipline
Regardless of the contemporary management and regulatory momentum, Flytrex should show it might probably stand sturdy in opposition to larger, better-funded rivals. Alphabet-owned Wing and longtime competitor Zipline are already working large-scale drone supply operations within the U.S. and overseas, with multi-vertical methods that stretch past meals.
For instance, Zipline is a large participant in medical deliveries, primarily in creating international locations together with Rwanda and Ghana. In 2025, Zipline marked its 100 million mile supply milestone.
Flytrex, in contrast, is narrowing in on a single use case.
“We’re targeted solely on meals supply,” Bardin mentioned. “We’re optimized for what it takes to ship meals from eating places to suburban customers. We additionally function our personal, vertically-integrated branded service.”
Flytrex made its identify manner again in 2017 when it carried out meals deliveries through drone in Iceland. A pair years later, it introduced that it might increase to the U.S., beginning with North Carolina. Since then, it’s grown to different areas together with Texas, which is essentially thought-about the main U.S. state for drone supply.
Immediately, Flytrex works with firms together with DoorDash (which additionally works with Wing.
The economics query
Drone supply skeptics level to at least one unresolved challenge: value. For years, pilot tasks have been backed, with profitability elusive. Bardin wouldn’t share financials however argued that the timing is true.
“Throughout autonomy we’re on the inflection level the place unit economics are aligning to make large development and scale achievable,” he mentioned.
Whether or not that’s sufficient to carry down the value of a sizzling meal in comparison with a DoorDash driver stays to be seen. Suburban sprawl, regulatory friction and client adoption are all potential hurdles.
Can Waze’s playbook work for drones?
Flytrex is betting Bardin’s expertise at Waze — scaling a client service by focusing relentlessly on consumer ache factors — will be utilized to drone supply.
“We’re laser targeted on fixing their actual ache factors,” he mentioned.
The appointment alerts a contemporary push for a corporation that, regardless of greater than 200,000 deliveries thus far, nonetheless lags behind Wing and Zipline in visibility and scope. The FAA’s BVLOS approval may stage the taking part in discipline. The proposed rule to allow routine BVLOS drone operations also needs to take away crimson tape.
However historical past means that regulatory wins alone don’t assure a sustainable enterprise.
For now, Flytrex is wagering that meals supply, with its mixture of urgency and excessive margins, is the appropriate place to begin.
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