Manna Aero makes Tulsa the center of its U.S. drone delivery push

Why it matters

Tulsa is Manna Aero's first real U.S. scale test: the company must turn drone delivery from controlled deployments into repeatable city operations.

Bobby Healy's Manna Aero is making Tulsa, Oklahoma its U.S. operating and manufacturing base, a concrete shift of capital and headcount toward the market Healy says every drone delivery operator wants. TechCrunch reported on July 8th that the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery company is setting up a Tulsa facility that Manna says will employ about 1,000 people over the next several years.

For Healy, the Tulsa move is the latest version of a thesis he has been working through since his suburban delivery frustration in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland has described the origin story plainly: Healy wanted a "bag of chips" at home, looked at the economics of food delivery in suburbs, and decided the trip should not require a car, moped or courier. Before Manna, he built video games for Nintendo, founded airline technology company Eland Technologies and sold it to SITA, then spent 15 years building CarTrawler, the car-rental marketplace for airlines.

The Tulsa plan gives that founder story a harder operating test. Manna is no longer proving whether a drone can lower coffee, takeout or medicine into a yard. It is trying to prove that a European company with venture capital, aviation experience and consumer-delivery partnerships can build a scaled U.S. network against better-capitalized or better-distributed rivals.

Tulsa is the base, not the whole plan

Manna said in its own July 8th announcement that Tulsa will become its first full-scale metropolitan U.S. operation and its central U.S. operating base. Manna also said it plans to build a U.S. manufacturing base there, while keeping Ireland as its global headquarters and the home of research, engineering, product, regulatory work and other functions.

TechCrunch reported that construction on the Tulsa factory is already underway and that Healy expects manufacturing to begin in about a year. Before the factory ramps, Manna is focusing on hiring the operations team, with Healy telling TechCrunch the company expects to add about 200 to 300 operations employees in Tulsa over the next 12 months. Manna is also assessing six other U.S. cities, with possible entries by the end of 2027 if Tulsa goes to plan.

Manna's public Tulsa pitch is built around convenience and local acceptance. Its homepage says the service is "coming soon to Tulsa" and advertises 3 minute delivery, cleaner air, less traffic, medical equipment, food and other goods. Its community materials emphasize quiet, regulated and private operations, along with support for local businesses and jobs.

That last part matters because drone delivery companies do not scale by software distribution alone. They need launch sites, municipal tolerance, airspace approvals, local merchant density and enough household demand to make frequent short flights economical. Tulsa is where Manna intends to bundle those constraints into a repeatable U.S. playbook.

April's round is being spent in America

Manna's U.S. push follows a $50 million Series B announced on April 1st, which Manna said brought total funding to $110 million. The company named ARK Invest, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Schooner Capital among its investors, alongside continued backing from Coca-Cola HBC, Molten Ventures and Enterprise Ireland. A valuation was not disclosed.

In the funding announcement, Manna said it had completed more than 250,000 regulated commercial flights and planned to grow from 170 employees to more than 570. In the July 8th Tulsa announcement, Manna put its completed global deliveries at almost 380,000. Those are company-reported figures, and Manna has not publicly disclosed revenue, ARR or per-flight pricing.

The spending priority is now clearer. Healy told TechCrunch that Manna is putting its capital and resources into the United States, citing the size of the market, consumer behavior and the maturity of aggregators such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. He put the appeal more directly: "The United States has the market that everybody wants."

The shift comes as Manna has pulled back in Ireland. TechCrunch reported that Manna no longer operates drone delivery in Ireland after citing a lack of planning regulations that would let it scale. The Irish Times reported on July 7th that Manna is pausing deliveries in Ireland while focusing investment and operational resources on the U.S., the U.K. and markets where policy and local planning are ready for drone delivery.

That timing explains another recent hire. Kenny Jacobs, the former DAA chief executive and former Ryanair chief marketing officer, has joined Manna as executive chairman and president. The Irish Times reported that Jacobs will help drive growth outside Ireland. For Manna, the hire adds an operator with aviation, retail and digital experience just as the company moves from controlled deployments into a U.S. scale-up.

The fight is against networks, not drones

Manna's aircraft do not land at the customer's home. TechCrunch reported that the drones are automated and remotely monitored, lowering packages by tether into a yard or driveway. The approach puts Manna closer operationally to Wing and Zipline than to drone concepts built around landing at the delivery point.

Manna's business model is also a distribution bet. TechCrunch described Manna as a delivery-as-a-service company that charges per flight, while reaching consumers through partner apps, direct merchant relationships and Manna's own app. Manna said in April that Uber had joined its delivery platform partnerships alongside Deliveroo, Just Eat and DoorDash.

The challenge is that the U.S. drone delivery market already has companies with distribution or capital advantages. Amazon Prime Air is tied to Amazon's retail machine. Wing has Alphabet behind it and is expanding with retail partners. Zipline has spent years turning drone delivery into healthcare, retail and restaurant logistics across multiple markets. TechCrunch framed Manna's U.S. goal as competing with Zipline, Amazon and Wing.

Manna's edge, if it has one, is Healy's insistence that the company is building a full-stack local delivery operator rather than a drone demonstration business. Its own April funding post said Manna designs, builds and operates the airframe, flight orchestration and local operations. The Tulsa facility is the first major test of whether that full-stack model can survive U.S. scale, where customer acquisition, local politics, FAA compliance and unit economics have to work at the same time.

There is plenty Manna has not shown publicly. It has not disclosed its U.S. revenue, cost per delivery, customer repeat rates in Texas, or the valuation attached to the Series B. Its company materials also give different founding-year references, with the April funding post saying Manna started in 2019 and the July expansion post saying it was founded in Ireland in 2018. Those gaps do not erase the operational progress, but they matter because drone delivery has a long history of impressive pilots followed by slower commercial adoption.

Tulsa turns Manna's claim into a city-scale test. If Healy can make suburban drone delivery feel ordinary there, Manna gets a shot at entering the next six U.S. cities with a story based on operations rather than novelty. If Tulsa stalls, the April round becomes another reminder that drone delivery companies can raise money before they prove the market is ready to reorder the last mile around the sky.