Validation burden
Aircraft, energy, communications, risk and operations are assessed in fragmented workflows.
Investor overview · June 2026
Reduce the cost of proving a drone operation works.
Locust sells route qualification, aircraft integration and infrastructure design for civil RPAS. Urban logistics is the first demanding reference market; the immediate product is evidence that shortens a customer’s proceed-or-stop decision.
Current stagePre-seed / prototype
Technology targetTRL 5
Initial geographyUnited Kingdom
Primary marketCivil RPAS
Why this company
Three constraints become one repeatable service.
The commercial opportunity is broader than delivering parcels. Reusable aircraft models, test scenarios, integrations and evidence workflows can serve developers and operators across multiple missions.
Assurance gap
Autonomous behavior needs reproducible evidence across nominal, degraded and contingency scenarios.
Deployment discipline
Operators need route-level economics and public-value evidence before committing capital or infrastructure.
Value creation milestones
Capital converts uncertainty into contracted evidence.
The company becomes more valuable when it proves repeatable customer outcomes, not when it adds more unsupported market slides.
Paid qualification
Convert a named route problem into a paid decision product.
- Two design partners
- Historic basket and route data
- First paid mission sprint
- Documented ground alternative
Calibrated integration
Replace representative specifications with bench, HIL and aircraft data.
- Named aircraft and operator
- Repeatable failure campaign
- Measured energy and noise
- Reusable evidence bundle
Bounded deployment
Prove that the system improves an actual customer decision and operating metric.
- Authorised pilot
- Measured completion and cost
- Customer renewal or expansion
- Second mission or geography
What exists today
Working software, clear gaps, no inflated claims.
The current Cambridge digital twin models deterministic fleet operations, representative aircraft dynamics, energy, risk-aware routing, restricted zones, weather, degraded communications, emergency behavior, noise and unit economics. None of these models has yet been calibrated with Locust flight data.12
Open operations model ↗Five aircraft references, three fleets, three demand levels, three tariffs and two seeds; 810 cost evaluations across staffing assumptions.12
Routing, reserves, charging, no-fly constraints and contingency behavior.
HIL integration, calibrated models, uncertainty bounds and relevant-environment evidence.
Business model
Three service layers. One compounding evidence base.
Customers can buy each layer independently or progress from a low-cost simulation engagement into aircraft and infrastructure deployment.
Simulation setup
Paid digital twin, scenario, safety, economics and deployment-planning work.
Drone setup
Aircraft, payload, autonomy, communications and HIL integration for the mission.
Infrastructure setup
Hubs, charging, connectivity, control systems and operational monitoring.
Monitoring & evidence service
Scenario re-runs, evidence updates, operational monitoring, optimization and support.
Capital strategy
Grant funds measurable R&D. Equity funds the company that sells it.
ATI’s SME Programme supports industrial research, offers grants up to £1.5 million and requires at least half of eligible project costs to go to MSMEs.3
Investor diligence
Questions we expect serious investors to ask.
What is defensible?
Integrated models, scenario provenance, evidence-generation workflows, aircraft integrations and accumulated calibration datasets. The IP plan is being formalised for the ATI consortium.
What is the first paying product?
A paid route and aircraft qualification programme for a civil-RPAS developer or operator, delivered with reusable models and test workflows rather than one-off analysis.
Why begin with logistics?
It creates demanding constraints across payload, energy, routing, public acceptance and economics. The underlying capability transfers to inspection, response and infrastructure missions.
What remains unproven?
Physical validation, customer willingness to pay, regulator acceptance and scalable acquisition. These are explicit milestones, not hidden assumptions.
What is the funding plan?
The current plan combines ATI-style industrial-research funding, consortium match and equity for team and commercial development. Amount and round terms remain to be confirmed.
What would change the thesis?
Failure to calibrate models, obtain end-user pull, integrate representative hardware or demonstrate that evidence meaningfully reduces customer validation cost.