Skyways

Skyways Air Transportation Inc. is an Austin, Texas-based company founded in 2017 by Charles Acknin, a former Google engineer, that designs and manufactures fully autonomous VTOL cargo drone aircraft. Operating from a 250,000-square-foot facility in North Austin's Tech Ridge neighborhood, Skyways has spent nearly a decade iterating on autonomous cargo delivery systems for commercial, defense, and maritime applications.

Skyways' aircraft operate with true autonomy: engineers send coordinates and flight plans directly to the drones, with no remote pilot making real-time decisions. The aircraft use machine learning and onboard sensors to navigate, making mission-by-mission decisions independently, similar in concept to autonomous ground vehicles but operating in three dimensions.

The company's current production aircraft, the V2, carries 30 pounds of useful cargo over 450 miles using a double-hybrid configuration — capable of vertical takeoff and landing like a helicopter, and cruising like a fixed-wing aircraft using both electric and fuel energy. The next-generation V3, targeted for the second half of 2026, significantly upgrades performance to 100 pounds of payload over 1,000 miles with over 20 hours of endurance, while reusing the same proven autonomy software stack.

Skyways has secured one of the largest autonomous drone contracts ever awarded to a startup: a $37 million U.S. Air Force STRATFI contract for V3 production. Commercial customers include ANA Holdings (Japan), which operates V2 drones between Okinawan islands and has invested $1 million through its corporate venture fund. The company has also completed historic cargo drone flights between airports for the U.S. military, and conducted a first-of-its-kind offshore cargo drop to a wind turbine in the Baltic Sea in partnership with RWE and Skyports. Skyways secured a $5 million debt facility from Leonid Capital Partners in early 2025 to accelerate V3 production.