Prominent solo investor Lachy Groom has backed a Bengaluru startup attempting an ambitious feat: keeping an aircraft in the sky for more than a year by harvesting energy from ocean winds.
Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, a technique albatrosses use to extract energy from the wind. Groom decided he wanted to invest within the first 30 minutes of their first meeting, Sanghvi told TechCrunch.
Conventional aircraft need to carry the fuel or battery power required for a flight. Alteon is trying to break that limitation by designing its small, fixed-wing autonomous aircraft that can extract energy from wind shear above the ocean through dynamic soaring — a maneuver in which an aircraft repeatedly moves between layers of air traveling at different speeds.
“Once you build airplanes that can stay in the air for more than a year, there are millions of things you can do with them,” Sanghvi told TechCrunch. Alteon plans to initially use the aircraft for maritime surveillance, giving governments real-time visibility into activity in their waters.
