Elroy Air
Definitive (DA signed)Pre-revenueIndustrials · autonomous heavy-cargo VTOL drone manufacturing · San Francisco, United States · founded 2016
- What it is
- Sell/deliver autonomous Chaparral cargo VTOL systems (manufactured by Kratos in the U.S., later JV production in Abu Dhabi) to defense and commercial logistics customers, layered with recurring autonomy-software licensing revenue per the SPAC sponsor; today the company is still pre-production - the deal is explicitly meant to 'fully fund commercial scale production'.
- What it’s doing now
- Merging with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VII (CMII) — definitive (da signed), announced Jun 26, 2026; expected close Q4 2026.
- What you should know
- It reports no meaningful revenue yet — this deal is priced on a story, not on financials. The real share count puts the effective valuation 49% above the announced $800M.
The business, per its filings
SEC primaryElroy Air, Inc. (San Francisco; founded November 2016 by Dave Merrill and Clint Cope; CEO Andrew Clare, PhD, with Merrill as Founder & Executive Chairman; facilities in Byron, CA) develops the Chaparral, a hybrid-electric autonomous VTOL cargo drone carrying 500+ lb of cargo up to ~450 miles with swappable multi-mission pods, aimed at defense resupply, rapid response and commercial middle-mile logistics. It is pre-revenue on products - first production aircraft are only 'planned for late 2026' via exclusive U.S. manufacturing partner Kratos Defense - but has real traction markers: 6+ years of active defense programs (U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Air Force), a claimed 1,400+ aircraft / $5bn+ 'potential revenue opportunity' demand pipeline (Bristow Group, Barq Group, SLI, FedEx), a $200M initial JV agreement with Abu Dhabi's Barq Group for a MENA plant (UAE flight ops 2027, local production 2028), the only heavy-payload uncrewed cargo OEM in USDOT's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, JGSDF (Japan) testing passed 22/22 items, and backers including Lockheed Martin Ventures, Shield Capital, Marlinspike, Snowpoint, DiamondStream and Catapult; Mark Esper sits on the board, McMaster/Lord/McKenzie advise. BCA signed 2026-06-26 with Columbus Circle Capital Corp II (Nasdaq CMII, the Inflection Point Asset Management / Cohen & Company SPAC, to be renamed Inflection Point Acquisition Corp VII): $800M pre-money all-stock equity value (~$1.0bn expected post-transaction EV), ~$166.6M committed PIPE, up to 11M earnout shares, close expected Q4 2026, ticker ELRY.
Source: 425, accession 0001213900-26-092637 · as of Jul 2, 2026 · extraction confidence: medium
What the company says about itself
Web research — not auditedSite leads with the go-public banner; leadership: Andrew Clare (CEO), Dave Merrill (Founder & Exec Chairman), Buddy Michini (CTO), Alvin Oswandy (Head of Finance); board: Merrill, Clare, Raj Shah (Shield), Mislav Tolusic (Marlinspike), Darren Liccardo (Catapult), Dean Donovan (DiamondStream), Mark Esper (27th SecDef), Chris Moran (Lockheed Martin Ventures); advisory board: H.R. McMaster, Ellen Lord, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie. Mission language: 'same-day shipping to every person on the planet'.
- Markets:
- Defense logistics (Army/USMC/USAF resupply); humanitarian/disaster response and firefighting support; commercial express cargo (warehouse-to-warehouse)
- Products:
- Chaparral autonomous hybrid-electric VTOL cargo aircraft; detachable modular Cargo Pod; autonomy/logistics software
- Customers:
- Site names no paying customers; deal PR names pipeline counterparties Bristow Group, Barq Group, SLI, FedEx and defense programs with U.S. Army, USMC, USAF
None material; site and filings agree. Co-founder Clint Cope no longer appears in site leadership.
Source: https://elroyair.com/company/about-us · captured Aug 15, 2026 · marketing claims are reported as claims, never merged into the filed figures above.
The deal it’s entering
Elroy Air is merging with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VII (CMII), a $230M SPAC currently marked Deal announced and trading at $10.04 against $10.00 in trust per share.
| Headline equity value | $800M |
| Effective valuation (all shares) | $1.2B+49% vs headline |
| Sponsor promote | 24.5% |
| PIPE | ≈ $100M · unsourcedSeries A cumulative convertible preferred@12.00 stated value + investor warrants (closing PIPE), on top of ~$78.4M face pre-funded convertible notes issued at signing |
| Post-close ticker | ELRY |
Structure per SEC accession(s) 0001213900-26-074998, 0001213900-26-056858. How to read these numbers: headline vs effective valuation · what a definitive agreement commits
What exactly is being valued, and at what
What the filings actually value
What Elroy Air on its own is valued at, before a dollar of the SPAC's trust or the PIPE reaches it. This is the price agreed for the business itself.
All figures above are stated in EX-99 press release0001213900-26-072370
EX-99 press release, 0001213900-26-072370: preMoneyEquityM "approximately $800 million" — the sponsor rounding its own figure. A press release is a party's own claim, not a filed table: any stated capitalisation table supersedes it.
Was this deal done at an expensive or a cheap valuation?
SpacBrain’s read on the price
No multiple can be computed
Elroy Air has no meaningful revenue yet, so no multiple is computable — this is priced on a story, not on financials. The deal still values it at $1.19bn.
The company reports no meaningful sales yet, so there is nothing to divide the price by.
Post-dilution equity (net debt unknown).
No meaningful revenue in the most recent reported period.
Not computable — the filings show no meaningful revenue for the most recent reported period.
$1 of their sales costs $36.88 on the open market. Median of 6 listed companies we judged a true comparable, which individually run from 4.93× to 534.18×. Their share prices are from 15 August 2026, not today.
What qualifies the figures above
- Struck on the post-dilution value of $1.19bn, not the announced $800M — new shares handed to the sponsor, warrant holders and the PIPE are part of what public buyers are really paying.
- The target's cash and debt are not in the filings we have, so this is an equity value used as a stand-in for enterprise value.
- BETA, EVTL, AIRO, BA, LMT, HOVR, FJET, NOC have no revenue to divide by, so they are shown but left out of the peer median.
- The peer group does not agree with itself: its revenue multiples run from 4.93× to 534.18×. A median drawn across that spread is a weak benchmark, so treat the verdict as a rough bearing, not a measurement.
The listed companies it is measured against
| Ticker | Company | Mkt cap | EV / revenue | EV / EBITDA | Why it’s comparable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVAV | AeroVironment, Inc. | $9.8B | 4.9x | 50.1x | AeroVironment is the profitable benchmark for U.S. defense uncrewed aircraft systems - the customer set (Army/USMC/USAF) and mission profile closest to Chaparral's defense resupply market.more ▾less ▴ |
| BETA | BETA Technologies, Inc. | $6.2B | — | — | Operational comp: Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing; mid-cap ($6.2bn); shares vtol, aircraft, cargo, defense, electric, miles with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 107.4x.more ▾less ▴ |
| KTOS | Kratos Defense & Security Solut | $12.1B | 7.2x | 125.0x | Kratos is Elroy Air's exclusive U.S. manufacturing partner and itself a listed uncrewed-systems/defense-tech OEM - the single most entangled comparable.more ▾less ▴ |
| JOBY | Joby Aviation, Inc. | $7.8B | 54.3x | — | Joby Aviation - flagship listed VTOL OEM; sets the market's valuation of pre-revenue electric-VTOL aircraft developers with defense interest. |
| EVTL | Vertical Aerospace Ltd. | $402M | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); small-cap ($402m); shares evtol, aircraft, miles, air, flight, oem with the target's own description; no forward EV/Sales published — counted as a peer, excluded from the median.more ▾less ▴ |
| ACHR | Archer Aviation Inc. | $5.1B | 534.2x | — | Archer Aviation - the other scaled pre-revenue eVTOL de-SPAC with a UAE/MENA expansion narrative directly analogous to Elroy's Barq Group JV. |
| RCAT | Red Cat Holdings, Inc. | $1.7B | 19.4x | — | Red Cat Holdings - small-cap pure-play military drone maker; the small-defense-drone end of the comp range. |
| AIRO | AIRO Group Holdings Inc | $256M | — | — | Operational comp: Drone Manufacturing; micro-cap ($256m); shares cargo, aircraft, evtol, pilot, air, defense with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 2.4x.more ▾less ▴ |
| MRLN | Merlin, Inc. | $380M | 63.3x | — | Merlin Labs - autonomous-aviation software de-SPAC from the same Inflection Point sponsor stable; comps the 'recurring autonomy software licensing' leg of the story.more ▾less ▴ |
| BA | Boeing Co | $170.4B | — | — | Operational comp: Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing; mega-cap ($170.4bn); shares bca, aircraft, defense, pilot, aerospace, production with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 2.1x.more ▾less ▴ |
| LMT | Lockheed Martin Corp | $111.9B | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); mega-cap ($111.9bn); shares lockheed, defense, aircraft, martin, air, integration with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 1.9x.more ▾less ▴ |
| HOVR | New Horizon Aircraft Ltd | $249M | — | — | Operational comp: Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing; micro-cap ($249m); shares vtol, aircraft, cargo, flight, air, but with the target's own description; no forward EV/Sales published — counted as a peer, excluded from the median.more ▾less ▴ |
| FJET | Starfighters Space Inc | $510M | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); small-cap ($510m); shares lockheed, aircraft, flight, pilot, air, testing with the target's own description; no forward EV/Sales published — counted as a peer, excluded from the median.more ▾less ▴ |
| NOC | Northrop Grumman Corp | $81.0B | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); mega-cap ($81.0bn); shares defense, mission, integration, aircraft, production, systems with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 2.2x.more ▾less ▴ |
Which companies belong on this list is our judgement, and the sentence beside each one is the whole of our reasoning — disagree with it and the verdict above changes. Rows marked context only are shown because they are informative, but they are deliberately left out of the median. The multiples come from listed-company data priced Aug 15, 2026; a private target’s deal multiple is not audited the way theirs are.
Common questions
Is Elroy Air going public?
Elroy Air has a signed merger with the SPAC Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VII (CMII), announced Jun 26, 2026. The combined company expects to trade as ELRY. Deal status: Definitive (DA signed).
What is Elroy Air's SPAC deal valuation?
The announced headline equity value is $800M, but counting every share class — founder promote, PIPE and public shares — the effective valuation is $1.2B, 49% above the headline.
Was Elroy Air bought at an expensive or a cheap valuation?
Elroy Air has no meaningful revenue yet, so no multiple is computable — this is priced on a story, not on financials. The deal still values it at $1.19bn.
Does Elroy Air have revenue?
No meaningful reported revenue in its most recent filed period — the deal is priced on a story and projections, not on financial results. Treat every valuation multiple accordingly.
Educational content, not investment advice.
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