Breakout Labs funds its first aerospace company, FlightWave
We’re excited to announce our first aerospace portfolio company, FlightWave. Based in Santa Monica, CA, FlightWave was founded in late 2014 by Dr. Michael Colonno, who received his Ph.D from Stanford’s Aerospace Design Lab and became one of the first engineers at SpaceX. He is joined by his co-founder Dr. Trent Lukaczyk, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. and Ignite graduate, who co-founded and led Stanford’s UAV program. Dr. Colonno presented FlightWave at our cocktail event in July.

In some ways, FlightWave is more mature than many of our Breakout Labs’ companies. It has, in fact, just launched its first product: the Edge. The Edge is a pretty cool drone, as many news outlets have attested this week:
FlightWave’s Edge: The Radical New Drone Flying Towards a Carbon-Free Future via Drone Life
FlightWave Edge Set to Redefine Drone Range, Endurance and Speed Capabilities via Commercial UAV News
4 New Commercial Drones (and Drone Products) Debuting This Fall via The Drone Girl
FlightWave Aerospace Systems Introduces FlightWave Edge UAS via AUVSI
FlightWave Introduces a Cost-Effective High-Tech Drone via UAS Magazine
FlightWave Gets New Competitive Edge via UAV Expert News
New FlightWave Drone Delivers Stronger, Faster Performance via Geeks World
But, our decision to support FlightWave was not based on a single UAV, no matter how cool. We were first introduced to FlightWave’s cofounders through our friends at Schmidt Marine Technology Ventures. We quickly realized that these ambitious engineers had a much bigger vision for an aerospace company. They are intent on creating a family of extremely long-range and long-endurance aerial vehicles using a highly-scalable, advanced energy technology. And in that sense, they are still quite early in their trajectory as a company.
Breakout Labs is helping to fund the development of this energy technology, which involves collaboration with world-renowned scientists from national laboratories. We’re confident that FlightWave will quickly disrupt the nascent drone market, and we’re equally eager to help support its long-term goal: to dramatically boost the range and endurance of aerospace vehicles via carbon-free energy sources. We can’t wait to tell you more about their technology as it develops.

