Maple Aviation

Summary

About

About Maple Aviation

Maple Aviation develops autonomous cargo drones and an operated delivery service for time-critical medical logistics. The company targets blood samples, laboratory specimens, pharmaceuticals and other urgent healthcare payloads moving between clinics, laboratories and hospitals. Its proposed window-docking interface transfers transport boxes without requiring a conventional landing pad at each destination.

The ESA-supported SURGEON demonstration project develops navigation that combines satellite-derived semantic maps, onboard image matching and visual-inertial odometry, with GNSS as a redundant input. Fraunhofer IVI and Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt contribute to software and autonomous-landing development, while clinical partners provide an operating context. ESA describes hardware prototyping and active flight testing, with the navigation work in its initial phase. The Ottobrunn-based company raised a €4 million funding round in June 2026 to support the transition from development toward operational medical transport.

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Funding

Investors

  • Bayern Kapital - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29
  • Bernd Bäzner - Participant - Angel / Individual - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29
  • ES Kapital - Participant - Corporate / CVC - 1 funding event - strategic/corporate - first seen 2026-06-29
  • Martin Giese (Cambridge Ventures) - Participant - Angel / Individual - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29
  • Rüdiger Schmidt - Participant - Angel / Individual - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29
  • Stefan Eishold - Participant - Angel / Individual - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29
  • superangels - Participant - Unknown - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-29

Team

  • Jonas Dengler - Co-founder and CFO - As chief financial officer, he is responsible for finance, market development, customer activity and personnel as Maple Aviation prepares its autonomous medical-logistics aircraft…
  • Christoph Busch - Co-founder

Timeline

Events

  • 2026-06-23 - Funding - Maple Aviation closes €4 million early-stage funding round

    Bayern Kapital, ES Kapital, superangels and business angels Rüdiger Schmidt, Stefan Eishold, Martin Giese and Bernd Bäzner participated in the €4 million pre-seed round. The capital supports aircraft development, charging infrastructure and team expansion ahead of operational service. More than ten hospitals and laboratories had selected Maple as a future logistics partner; first paying-customer operations were planned for year-end 2026.

    Source

Relations

Relationships

  • Fraunhofer IVI

    Software Partner - Fraunhofer IVI is developing navigation software with Maple Aviation for SURGEON.

  • Klinikum Rechts der Isar

    Pilot Customer - Klinikum Rechts der Isar is the pilot user and customer for the SURGEON project.

  • European Space Agency

    Programme Sponsor - ESA supports Maple Aviation's SURGEON medical-drone demonstration project.

Context

Comparable profiles

Context tags

  • Drone delivery OEM - Stack Layer - https://business.esa.int/projects/surgeon -- Develops complete medical cargo aircraft;precommercialdevelopment,nocurrentcommercialnetworkclaim.