Reliable Robotics, a Mountain View, California-based aviation technology startup, has successfully secured a $115 million funding extension, officially pushing its valuation past the coveted $1 billion mark. The nearly decade-old company has been methodically working to commercialize advanced autonomous flying technology designed to be retrofitted onto existing aircraft. With this fresh capital injection, the startup extends its operational runway as it presses forward to achieve a critical milestone: securing certification for its autonomous flight systems from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The latest financing structure is an extension of the company’s Series D round, bringing the total raised for this single round to $275 million, and pushing Reliable Robotics’ overall funding to a staggering $380 million to date. The new capital consists of $90 million in equity funding led by Nimble Partners, alongside $25 million in debt financing provided by Silicon Valley Bank. A diverse cohort of participating investors also contributed to the round, including Gideon Strategic Partners, RockCreek, Geek Ventures, Gold Hill Capital, and Sparkwave Capital, among others.
Robert Rose, co-founder and CEO of Reliable Robotics—whose impressive industry background includes serving as the director of flight software at SpaceX, as well as holding key engineering roles at Tesla and Google—emphasized the steady and deliberate nature of the startup’s regulatory journey.
"We continue to make steady progress and deliver evidence to the FAA and every day, we inch closer and closer," Rose said.
This deep engineering pedigree is further underscored by Reliable’s co-founder and CTO, Juerg Frefel, who also spent nearly a decade as an engineer at SpaceX. Within aviation—widely recognized as one of the most strictly regulated industries in the world—making measurable, methodical moves toward the certification of entirely new technological paradigms represents significant forward momentum.
A Four-Pronged Strategy for FAA Certification
Reliable Robotics is pursuing FAA certification across four distinct, interconnected fronts, each directly tied to its overarching mission of enabling comprehensive autonomous flight.
The startup’s flagship product, known as continuous autopilot engagement, is designed to assist human pilots by handling the more routine and mechanically intensive phases of a flight. Specifically, the system manages engine startup, taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Throughout these procedures, the pilot remains physically inside the aircraft, interacting with the autonomous flight architecture through an intuitive touchscreen interface. Rose projects that the company will receive FAA certification for this foundational system within the next 18 to 24 months.
Looking further ahead, the company’s second major certification objective involves completely removing the pilot from the cockpit. In this advanced operational model, the pilot will transition to a remote ground-control station, monitoring and managing the aircraft from afar. Rose notes that this milestone is at least three years away from realization.
Simultaneously, Reliable Robotics is pursuing regulatory approval for a proprietary collision-avoidance radar system. The startup was forced to develop this technology in-house after struggling to attract legacy aerospace suppliers willing to take on the complex project. Traditional commercial radar systems typically rely on an antenna that physically moves to scan the surrounding airspace. In contrast, Reliable has engineered a solid-state radar featuring zero moving parts. According to Rose, this innovative design scans the sky at a substantially longer range and with a much higher resolution. Furthermore, because it lacks mechanical moving parts, the system is considerably easier to maintain and cheaper to manufacture.
"This is of great interest to operators these days, given the collisions that we’ve had recently in commercial aviation," Rose noted. He added that the radar is versatile enough to operate on the ground, actively preventing dangerous collisions with other aircraft or airport infrastructure. The startup anticipates that its solid-state radar will receive FAA certification by the end of 2027.
The fourth and final certification track involves the company’s proprietary airline subsidiary, appropriately named Reliable Airlines. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the carrier operates a fleet of six Cessna Caravans—widely regarded as the dependable workhorses of the regional aviation industry—to fly cargo six days a week. While the FAA certifies the physical equipment and software, federal regulations require that the airline operations themselves be certified under an entirely separate, rigorous set of regulatory frameworks.
Industry Outlook and the Broader Vision
While navigating the lengthy and demanding FAA certification process requires immense patience and capital, Nimble Partners founder John Burbank believes the ultimate rewards will be broad, profound, and industry-altering.
"It’s a much bigger effort and much bigger opportunity than to just build one plane," Burbank observed, highlighting that Reliable Robotics is deliberately engineering a universal system capable of being integrated into virtually any airframe.
"They had a really big vision nine years ago, and saw this as something needed and essential," Burbank added. "Once they get the first one approved, then everyone will realize this is going to be the path for the industry, just as we’re seeing the path for the auto industry being autonomous."
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