Merlin Expands Autonomy System Into Commercial Cargo

BOSTON–Merlin is expanding its autonomous flight platform into the commercial cargo market with the launch of a new product line called Condor, as the company looks to build on its military work and accelerate growth following its recent transition to the public markets.

The company said Condor applies its Merlin Pilot autonomy system to large multi-crew cargo aircraft, representing the next phase of its strategy to introduce autonomy to existing fixed-wing aircraft.

“The progression here is always going to be military, cargo, passenger,” Merlin CEO Matt George told Aviation Week at the company’s headquarters here. “The cargo market is the natural bridge because operators are dealing with structural pilot shortages today, and you don’t have the added complexity of carrying passengers, which is also a meaningful factor toward early adoption.”

Merlin’s incremental approach to autonomy differs from some other startups that are pursuing fully uncrewed aircraft from the outset. Instead, the company is initially focused on reduced-crew operations in which a human pilot onboard remains a supervisor while the autonomous system performs most of the flying.

“We think that the safer way of doing it is building the trust in the autonomy alongside a human pilot first,” George says. “The autonomy starts to take progressively more action on the aircraft, and the human will take progressively less action.”

Merlin is also differentiating itself through its use of artificial intelligence (AI). George said Merlin’s approach combines AI-enabled autonomy functions with a more deterministic, certifiable software structure intended to satisfy regulators and integrate into the existing airspace system.

“We think that AI is a tremendously important part of actually delivering a solution to the end customer,” he said. “But if you go in there and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this black-box pilot,’ I think that’s going to be a really challenging sell.”

The company’s commercial cargo push builds on its ongoing work with U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to integrate the Merlin Pilot system onto the Lockheed Martin C-130J transport aircraft under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract.

Merlin recently completed a preliminary design review (PDR) for the C-130J program and is working toward a future critical design review (CDR) milestone. George said lessons learned from the military effort are directly applicable to large cargo aircraft.

The company is also continuing certification work on its autonomous flight system for the Cessna Caravan in New Zealand. George described New Zealand as a favorable test environment because of its flexible regulator and varied weather conditions.

“New Zealand has proven to be a very nimble, very forward-leaning, progressive regulator,” he said. “They also have all the world’s weather in one spot, which makes it a perfect operational test environment.”

The Condor announcement comes several months after Merlin completed a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. II, taking the company public in March.

In late April, Merlin also raised $80 million through a private investment in public equity (PIPE) offering, bringing the company’s total available liquidity to $183 million.

“We think that ultimately whoever builds the autonomy prime of record is going to be a really meaningful, big company that has a lot of positive impact on people around the world,” George said. “Going public enables us to achieve that mission much sooner, and it gives us much more flexibility in terms of raising capital.”

Following the SPAC merger, Merlin expanded its leadership team through a series of senior hires including Michael Baker, who most recently served as global head of brand and communications at 3D printing company Formlabs, as chief marketing officer; and Mark Brunner, who led public sector growth initiatives at technology companies PsiQuantum and Primer AI, as chief revenue officer.

The company also announced a seven-member board with George serving as chairman and six independent directors, including Inflection Point president Michael Blitzer as lead independent director; former U.S. Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaithe; former Amazon Chief Accounting Officer Kelyn Brannon; former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller Michael Montelongo; Former Blue Origin CEO Robert Smith; and Azul co-founder Carolyn Trabuco.

Merlin also released its first-quarter financial results on May 14, reporting approximately $1 million in revenue and a net loss of $90.4 million, compared with a net loss of $12.7 million during the same period last year.