Wingtra Shipped Its EIC Accelerator Drone Redesign, CE Mark Late

Surveyors who map land from the air have long had to choose between two kinds of drone: multicopters that take off anywhere but stay up for minutes, and fixed-wing planes that cover large areas but need a runway or a belly landing. Wingtra, a spin-off from ETH Zurich's Autonomous Systems Lab, builds a drone that does both: it stands on its tail, lifts off vertically like a helicopter, tips forward and flies like a plane, then lands upright again. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2020 cut-off, the European Commission selected Wingtra AG for blended finance, a grant plus equity, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names Wingtra as the only beneficiary of the project. The grant was €2,478,829.50 towards a €3,541,185 project that ran from February 2021 to January 2023, according to CORDIS.

The equity followed. The EIC Fund took part in Wingtra's $22 million Series B in March 2023, according to the company's announcement and TechCrunch, and Wingtra AG is listed in the EIC Fund's official portfolio under the mobility sector. The size of the EIC stake has not been disclosed.

Where Wingtra Stands in 2026

Wingtra is operating and still shipping new hardware. In July 2025 it launched WingtraRAY, a successor platform with six survey payloads and an optional parachute, and in February 2026 it said WingtraRAY had obtained the European C6 class certification through TÜV Rheinland, which opens flights under Europe's standard scenarios, on top of an existing C3 mark, according to the company's release. A guide on its website, updated in September 2026, tells US buyers that Wingtra products can still be bought and used under new Federal Communications Commission rules on foreign-made drones, according to Wingtra.

The Swiss commercial register shows Wingtra AG as active, with its latest entry published on 26 June 2025, when Marc Kegelaers joined the board, according to Zefix and North Data. Bryn Fosburgh, who spent about 30 years at the surveying technology group Trimble, joined as an independent board member in September 2024, according to the company's announcement; the register recorded him in December 2024.

Wingtra's own scale claims have grown. In March 2023 it said "hundreds" of organisations in 96 countries used its drone and that it had almost 200 employees, according to eeNews Europe and TechCrunch. Its company page now claims "2,000+ customers", more than 100 resellers and more than 100,000 flights a year, while its home page says "1,500+ organizations". The two figures on its own website do not match, and none of them can be checked independently. The same company page puts the team at "125+", which, if both statements are accurate, is about 75 fewer people than in 2023. No layoff has been announced, and no revenue figure has ever been published; Swiss companies are not required to file public accounts.

The Technology: A Plane That Lands on Its Tail

The CORDIS report sets out the problem Wingtra set out to solve. Multicopters "cannot cover large areas" because their rotors spend energy fighting gravity, so flights last 15 to 30 minutes, while fixed-wing drones are "notoriously unreliable due to crash landings after every flight" and need a large clear area to land, according to the project's report. Wingtra's tail-sitter combines vertical take-off and landing with wing-borne flight. In its earlier EU feasibility study, the company said the drone could land in a space of 2 by 2 metres, such as a boat or a forest lane, and cover more than 100 hectares at 1 cm per pixel in a single flight, according to CORDIS.

The second-generation WingtraOne, launched in August 2021, added a new onboard computer, an in-house navigation unit, an oblique camera for 3D city mapping, multispectral cameras for agriculture and built-in PPK positioning on every drone, according to DroneDJ. Wingtra says its drones serve construction, infrastructure, mining and land development, and it names customers such as CEMEX, Rio Tinto, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Kenya Red Cross, according to TechCrunch and the company's 2023 announcement.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The WingtraOne grant was Wingtra's second Horizon 2020 award. In November 2018 it had started a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, whose stated goals were to complete product engineering, set up an industrial production line and run a European pilot, according to CORDIS. The 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot project was meant to "finalise the development" of the drone and commercialise it, according to its objective. CORDIS and the EC list both still give the company's original Zug address, although the register moved its seat to Zurich in December 2018.

The only published summary on CORDIS is labelled as the report for the second period, February 2022 to January 2023, but its text describes "the first reporting period". It says Wingtra redesigned the drone's main control unit to add a Wi-Fi module and more safety features, integrated and tested "two (thermal and oblique) out of three aspired potential additional payloads", and was preparing "to re-file for CE marking". The project's one public deliverable, a pilot test report dated 31 January 2023, says more than 10 beta users, including the Swiss farm software company Agricircle, the surveying firm Geoplan and ETH Zurich, used the new system "for 3+ months" in routine work, according to the deliverable. It dates the product launch to Q4 2021; DroneDJ reported the launch in August 2021.

1. Redesigned electronics and safety featuresDeliveredCompleted per CORDIS; shipped in the GEN II, per DroneDJ.
2. Pilot with European usersDelivered10+ beta users for 3+ months, per the D4.1 pilot report.
3. Three additional payloadsTwo of threeThermal and oblique integrated by project end; the third is not named and no completion was reported. A new MAP61 mapping camera followed in September 2024.
4. New CE certificationLatePending at project end; C3 class marking announced in October 2023, nine months later.
5. Fertiliser and cost savings for EU farmsNot shownNo farm results published by Wingtra or anyone else.

The C3 marking, which lets the drone fly in the EU's open A3 category from 1 January 2024, came after a conformity assessment by NavCert GmbH, according to Circuit Press, while EU Drone Port says it issued an EU-type examination certificate for the GEN II fitted with the MAP61 camera, according to EU Drone Port. The sources name different certifying bodies, which the public record does not explain, but both confirm the C3 mark.

The report's larger claims are a different matter. It said the industrialised WingtraOne "will slash total costs by 73%" against other solutions, and that the drone could save European farms of more than 100 hectares about €3,600 a year each, "a €1.2 billion savings opportunity", while cutting more than 4.8 million tonnes of CO2 over 10 years through lower fertiliser use. Wingtra has not published any measurement of these effects, and its named customers since the project are mostly in surveying, construction and mining rather than farming.

The Money

Wingtra raised $10 million in a Series A in May 2019 from Credit Suisse Entrepreneur Capital, investiere, private investors and Zürcher Kantonalbank, when it had more than 70 staff and sales in more than 40 countries, according to the company's release and Startupticker. The $22 million Series B of March 2023 came from DiamondStream Partners, EquityPitcher Ventures, Verve Ventures, the EIC Fund, ACE & Company and John L. Steffens, founder of Spring Mountain Capital. No round has been announced since.

The share register tells the same story in its own terms. Wingtra issued new shares 13 times between 2016 and July 2024, including a new class of B preferred shares from November 2022 onwards, the period of the Series B, according to the Swiss gazette entries in Zefix. The last capital increase was registered in July 2024; the June 2025 entry only cancelled seven shares. When the EIC Fund's shares were issued, and at what price, is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

The European Commission's Drone Strategy 2.0, adopted on 29 November 2022, expects "mapping, imaging, inspection and surveillance" by civil drones to be part of European life by 2030, forecasts a drone services market of €14.5 billion with 145,000 jobs by then, and aims to "reduce existing strategic dependencies and avoid new ones arising", according to the Commission. On its own regulatory page Wingtra pitches itself to US buyers as an alternative to DJI, whose drones are now barred from US federal projects, according to Wingtra. A Swiss-built survey drone with European class marks is the kind of supplier the strategy describes, even though Switzerland is not an EU member.

The Verdict

Wingtra has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.