In Orbit
Setting the Scene
Getting critical supplies to remote or hostile areas remains a massive challenge, whether during natural disasters, in war zones, or in failed-state regions.
Traditional logistics routes are often blocked, too risky, or outright unusable, especially for last-mile delivery in military operations.
Existing autonomous delivery systems like drones and air-dropped parachutes struggle with limited range, tiny payloads, and high visibility.
In today’s contested environments, there’s growing demand for delivery platforms that can bypass impassable terrain, evade radar, and reach targets deep behind enemy lines.
This week’s company has built a high-altitude delivery system that evades radar and drops cargo with pinpoint accuracy.
In a Sentence
In Orbit Aerospace is a high-altitude autonomous delivery platform that transports critical supplies into hard-to-reach environments, flying above radar and landing cargo with precision.
High-Altitude: Flies far above traditional aircraft and drones, avoiding terrain, infrastructure, and enemy detection systems.
Autonomous: Operates without a pilot or ground controller, using onboard systems to navigate and deliver supplies
Precision: Delivers cargo with extreme accuracy, often within a few meters of the target even in remote or contested areas
Bulleted Version:
- Think FedEx, but the driver is a robot, the route is through the stratosphere, and the destination is hard-to-reach environments like disaster zones, mountain ranges, or active conflict areas.
The Basics
- Headquarters: Torrance, CA
- Employee Count: 6
- Investors:
- Funding amount: $2M
- Business model: B2G (product sales to government) and B2B (product + service model for commercial defense contractors)
- Early traction: Active test and evaluation with the Army, Air Force, and SOCOM, $700K in sales to the U.S. Air Force and Special Operations, $4M in awarded contracts from the Air Force and Special Ops
Due Diligence
WHAT WE LIKE
Market Opportunity: In Orbit begins in the US $169B defense logistics market, with a clear path into $25B humanitarian aid and $5.6T global logistics market, creating a sequential expansion across three large and growing segments.
Technical Differentiation: In Orbit’s high-altitude balloon and glider system is both significantly harder to intercept and far cheaper to operate than traditional UAVs or aircraft, while still delivering meaningful payloads.
Logistics Without Limits: In Orbit rewrites the rules of resupply by removing the usual constraints. No runways, no drones, no airspace clearance. Just launch and deliver.
POTENTIAL RISKS
Regulatory Uncertainty: Navigating airspace approvals for autonomous high-altitude systems remains a gray area, and long FAA certification timelines could delay broader deployment.
Weather Dependence: High-altitude operations rely on favorable wind and atmospheric conditions, which can introduce variability in mission timing and require sophisticated planning to ensure reliability.
Operational Complexity: Coordinating balloon ascent, high-altitude routing, and glide-phase delivery may create logistical and training demands that slow early adoption among large institutional customers.
Founder Profile
Ryan Elliott, CEO: Led hardware development at a Kennedy Space Center startup and contributed to national security satellite and missile defense programs at SAIC and Raytheon.
Antonio Coelho, COO: Managed complex aerospace programs spanning lunar exploration, satellite constellations, and missile-warning systems at The Aerospace Corporation and Northrop Grumman.
Ishaan Patel, CTO: Built flight software, guidance algorithms, and mission ops for major space missions at L3 Harris and NASA Goddard; now leads autonomy efforts at In Orbit.
Comps
Grid Aero: Develops autonomous delivery systems for contested logistics, operating primarily at low altitude with a UAV-based approach.
Poseidon: Builds air-dropped delivery platforms released from cargo aircraft, focusing on resupply missions that rely on traditional airdrop corridors.
Silent Arrow: Produces glider-based delivery systems deployed from aircraft, offering medium-range airdrop capability rather than high-altitude, wind-driven transport.
Why In Orbit
By lowering delivery costs with balloon-based flight, reducing interception and radar risk through high-altitude routing, and offering far greater payload capacity than comparable systems, In Orbit is well positioned to deliver results.
