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Exosonic, a startup developing supersonic commercial air travel and UAV tech, is winding down after five years of operation.
In an update posted to its website, Exosonic said it was unable to find the traction necessary to continue operations.
“Although the founders and team still believe in the need/desire for quiet supersonic flight and supersonic drones for the US Department of Defense, without further customer support for either concept, the company cannot sustain the cash needs to make further advancements,” the update says.
Exosonic was founded in 2019 by Norris Tie, a propulsion engineer who cut his teeth at primes like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin; at the latter company he reportedly worked on the low-boom X-59 aircraft for NASA. Exosonic joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 cohort and went on to raise over $4.5 million from venture investors including Soma Capital, Psion Capital, and Stellar Solutions. The startup also bagged several small grants from the U.S. Air Force under its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
The company was making progress: it hit a major milestone earlier this year when it flew its first aircraft, a sub scale variant of its supersonic UAV called EX-3M Trident, in a test flight in California. It also had two other vehicles under development: a supersonic airliner called Horizon and a larger UAV called Revenant.
It sounds like the company was ultimately unable to bridge what’s often referred to in defense tech as “the valley of death” — the period between R&D and commercialization. This is a well-known problem for vendors looking to sell to the Department of Defense, and a place where venture capitalists have said they could step in — unless they don’t. As Exosonic put it on LinkedIn, “Without further government support for its near-term supersonic UAV development, Exosonic can no longer sustain the capital required to further advance the concept.”
TechCrunch reached out to Tie for comment and will update the story if he responds.
Aria Alamalhodaei covers the space and defense industries at TechCrunch. Previously, she covered the public utilities and the power grid for California Energy Markets. You can also find her work at MIT’s Undark Magazine, The Verge, and Discover Magazine. She received an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Aria is based in Austin, Texas.
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