Irish drone delivery startup Manna is building a 1,000-person US factory in Tulsa to take on Zipline and Wing

Manna Aero, the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery startup, is setting up a US operations and manufacturing centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will employ about 1,000 people over the next several years. Construction is underway, with manufacturing expected to begin in about a year. The expansion is fuelled by the $50 million in venture capital Manna raised in April.

The company will scale its operations team to 200 to 300 people in the next 12 months, with factory hiring dependent on the pace of expansion beyond Tulsa. Manna is assessing six other US cities and plans to enter them by end of 2027 if all goes well. CEO Bobby Healy told TechCrunch the goal is to become a major US drone delivery operator competing with Zipline, Amazon, and Google’s Wing.

“The United States has the market that everybody wants,” Healy said, citing the size of the market, consumer behaviour, and the consolidation by aggregators like DoorDash and Uber Eats. Manna operates autonomous, remotely monitored drones that lower packages on a tether rather than landing. It has a hybrid business model: delivery-as-a-service charging per flight, with partnerships across DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats in Europe alongside its own consumer app. Drone delivery has evolved from a novelty into a competitive market, with Amazon, Walmart, and Zipline all scaling US operations.

The move to the US was driven partly by frustration at home. Manna pulled back drone delivery operations in Ireland last month, citing a lack of planning regulations that would allow it to scale. It hired former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as executive chair and president to drive the expansion. Healy said the Trump administration and the FAA have given the industry a “turbo boost” from a regulatory standpoint. Drone startups across sectors are increasingly pivoting toward the US as regulatory clarity and defence spending create the most favourable environment for autonomous flight operations.

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Manna is not entirely new to the US. It began operating in 2023 in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone near Dallas and has expanded into the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. “We’re probably slightly behind the curve, but we’ll catch up quickly,” Healy said.