Manna Aero, the Irish autonomous drone delivery startup, has been a smaller player in the United States. Founder and CEO Bobby Healy told TechCrunch that’s about to change.

The startup, boosted by the $50 million in venture capital it raised in April, said Wednesday that it is establishing a U.S. operations and manufacturing center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will employ about 1,000 people over the next few years. Construction of the factory is underway and Healy expects manufacturing to begin there in about a year.

As construction continues, the company will focus on expanding its operations team to between 200 and 300 people over the next 12 months, according to Healy. The pace of hiring at the factory will depend on the rate of growth outside of Tulsa, he said, noting that the company is evaluating six other American cities. If all goes well, Maná will begin arriving in those cities at the end of 2027.

The ultimate goal is to make Manna Aero a major U.S. drone delivery operator that competes with Zipline, Amazon and Google’s Wing, among others.

“It’s just the size of the market here, the consumer behavior and the fact that the aggregators (DoorDash, Uber Eats) have consolidated the market so well and are very well managed,” Healy said, explaining the US expansion. “The United States has the market that everyone wants.”

Manna operates automated, remotely monitored drones that do not land. Instead, they lower the pack with a strap, the same technique used by the Wing and Zipline. Manna has a hybrid business model. It is fundamentally a delivery-as-a-service company that charges per flight. But it has different ways to achieve this, including through partnerships with DoorDash, Deliveroo and Uber Eats in Europe, as well as direct partnerships with businesses and its own consumer-facing app.

Manna is still headquartered in Ireland, where its R&D, manufacturing and administrative operations are located. But it no longer makes drone deliveries in the country; Manna pulled its drone delivery operations last month citing a lack of planning regulations that would allow it to scale there.

Instead, the startup is investing its capital and resources in the United States. The company hired former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as CEO and president to drive expansion.

Healy said the Trump administration and FAA policies have given the industry a “turbo boost” in the country.

“It’s trickling down to gross investment,” he said. “A company like us, we would not have had any plans to grow in the United States until the environment was ready from a regulatory standpoint to initiate growth, so we have decided very clearly that now is the time to invest every penny we have in the United States.”

Healy pointed to the growth of Amazon, Wing and Zipline over the past year as evidence of those policies.

“We’re probably slightly behind the curve, but we’ll catch up quickly,” he said.

Manna is not entirely new to the United States. The startup began operations in 2023 in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, which is part of a planned community near Dallas, Texas, developed by real estate development company Hillwood. Healy said Manna has expanded into the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and plans to continue growing there over the next year.