Wingcopter

Wingcopter is a German aerospace company founded in 2017 in Darmstadt by Jonathan Hesselbarth, Tom Plümmer and Ansgar Kadura, and now headquartered in nearby Weiterstadt. It builds electric tilt-rotor VTOL aircraft — rotors that point upward for vertical take-off and rotate forward for wing-borne cruise flight — and employed roughly 100–150 people as of 2026.

The company built its reputation on humanitarian and commercial logistics. Its flagship delivery aircraft, the Wingcopter 198, launched in April 2021 and can carry up to three separate 5 kg packages, releasing each in flight without landing. Wingcopter has flown vaccine, blood and medical-supply deliveries in programmes with DHL, UNICEF and government health agencies across Africa and the South Pacific, and partnered with UPS from 2020 on next-generation delivery drones. An earlier model, the Wingcopter 178, could carry up to 6 kg over a 120 km range.

In 2026 Wingcopter formed a Wingcopter Security & Defence business unit and, in February that year, signed a memorandum of understanding with TAF Industries — Ukraine's largest UAV producer — to build a joint venture manufacturing Ukrainian-designed reconnaissance drones in Germany. That partnership produced the unit's first product, the Wingcopter 262, a 10 kg tactical reconnaissance VTOL with up to six hours of endurance, launched on 14 September 2026 at a defence event in Düsseldorf.

Funding has come in stages: seed capital from Corecam Capital Partners in 2020, a $22 million Series A round led by Xplorer Capital in January 2021, and a €40 million investment from the European Investment Bank in May 2023.