New fundraising will help Manna achieve 'strong growth' over the next two years
Paul Connolly, right, head of hardware engineering, Manna Air Delivery, gives a guided tour of the manufacturing workshop to enterprise minister Peter Burke at the Dublin HQ of Manna Air Delivery on Wednesday. Pictures: Julien Behal
Irish drone delivery firm Manna has secured an additional $50m (€43.6m) in funding, which will help it achieve “strong growth” over the next two years and allow it to create an additional 400 jobs between its locations in Ireland and the US, the company has said.
Investors in this round included ARK Invest, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), and Schooner Capital, alongside the company’s existing investors which includes Coca-Cola, Molten Ventures and Enterprise Ireland.
Following this latest funding round, the total investment brought into the company so far now stands at $110m.
Speaking to the , founder and chief executive of Manna Bobby Healy said the investment of $50m is “what we needed to do the next phase of business” and would get the company “probably two years of strong growth”.
Mr Healy said their goal is to get to two million deliveries by the end of this year or early next year.
To do that, the company believes it needs 150 aircraft as well as a team of between 200 and 400.
The company is scaling up the number of drones it has. At the moment, it has a fleet of 40 drones and is adding two a week. By the end of the year, the company expects to have more than 100 drones. Manna designs, builds and operates its drones and software in Ireland.
The company is planning on expanding to the UAE by the end of the year but that depends on the progression of the conflict taking place.
"We've already hired a lot of people ahead of the next six months, but we don't have the people for the 12 months after that. So we've started to hire people in the UAE. We started to hire people in Texas and Oklahoma,” Mr Healy said.
The new roles will be split between research and development and operations.
Of that 400, 300 are expected to be employed in Ireland to help the company scale up its operations, with 100 based in the US.
Mr Healy said the hires in Ireland would likely be split between Cork, Offaly and Dublin, adding Cork had a “strong ecosystem” for talent with the likes of Apple and Qualcomm having operations in the county.
On the fundraising bringing in Ark Invest, which has made significant gains over the years by investing early in companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Healy said it came to Manna about investing and sent one of its people over a year and a half ago to take a look at Manna's operations.
"They came over and saw it and that was really the key thing,” he said, adding they had a call with the team at the firm and its chief executive Cathie Wood in December.
“The following morning we had an offer in our inbox,” Mr Healy said.
Over the past seven years, Manna has operated across Ireland in Blanchardstown (Dublin West), Balbriggan, Dublin, Moneygall, Co Offaly, Oranmore, Co Galway, and Cork, as well as internationally in Texas and Finland.
Last month, Manna announced a new pilot partnership programme in Cork City to explore the demand for its services with an eye to a gradual rollout of the system.
The company has completed more than 250,000 deliveries, including 60,000 in Blanchardstown over two years, delivering books, medical supplies such as antigen tests, food and clothing.
Executive director of Enterprise Ireland Kevin Sherry said its continued investment reflects its “focus on supporting bold founders with ambition to scale internationally from an Irish base”.
“Manna is a standout example of an Irish company with clear global growth opportunities driven from an Irish headquarters. We are excited to continue partnering with the company as it accelerates its international expansion, substantially increasing its employment in Ireland,” he said.
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