Drone delivery venture Swoop Aero, which raised more than $26 million in VC funding, has been placed in administration as cofounder Eric Peck claimed pressure from investors placed the business in that position.
BPS Reconstruction and Recovery’s Simon Nelson was appointed administrator of Swoop Aero Pty Ltd and Kookaburra Aerospace Pty Ltd on October 14.
Swoop continues to trade under the administrator’s control as it looks for a new investor or buyer for the business.
“The Administrator is currently working with key staff and management in order to assess the viability of the business to continue trading with an aim of achieving a sale as a going concern or alternatively a recapitalisation to obtain the best result possible for creditors and other stakeholders,” BPS said in a statement.
Swoop Aero did not respond to Startup Daily’s request for comment, but cofounder and CEO Eric Peck claimed to the AFR that the seven-year-old Melbourne business had been under pressure from a key investor while being unable to secure unable to secure a modest sum, described as “just a few hundred thousand dollars” to complete production of its Kite drones, first announced in 2021.
Peck, who told AFR he wanted to step down as CEO, but was willing to stay in the role if asked to by new investors following the restructure. The former RAAF pilot alleged that following 2021’s $16 million Series B, the dynamic between investors changes, implying they didn’t understand regulatory compliance in the aviation sector and that delayed Swoop bringing its product to market.
“It was an incredibly stressful time. When you’re the director responsible for aviation safety, you hold extra liability,” Peck told the AFR.
“We haven’t got enough diversity within venture capital in Australia to understand safety critical businesses really well. We were pressured to save two months of costs, but that then cost us 12 months.”
The Series B was led by the CSIRO-backed VC fund Main Sequence, with support from Melbourne impact fund Giant Leap and US investor In-Q-Tel, the defence tech investment arm of the CIA. It was also the third cheque written by Artesian and Folklore Ventures. Right Click Capital was also on the cap table. Swoop was part of Blackbird’s Startmate accelerator program back in 2018.
Stuck in a loop
Peck declined to name the investor responsible, but said they were “stuck in a loop where we needed to ramp up manufacturing to ramp up revenue, but we needed capital”.
An email he wrote to shareholders described 2023 as “turbulent”, with a funding shortfall for to meet the startup’s regulatory, product and operational demands.

The Swoop Aero Kite
In early 2023, Peck told Forbes that Swoop was raising $60m raise in the US, and had already secured around half that funding, amid plans for revenues of $100m by 2025.
“Through to the end of 2025, we have plans to deploy 10 networks in high-income counties – the first two are in Australia, and the other eight are in a range of countries overseas. Alongside that, we will deploy six additional impact networks in lower-income countries,” Peck told Forbes.
No funding was subsequently announced.
The business reportedly had a $100 million takeover offer in 2022.
Peck cofounded Swoop in 2017 with engineer Joshua Tepper with a focus on delivering urgent supplies, especially medicines, to remote areas, especially in Africa, delivering Ebola vaccines, and collaborated with the likes of UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve health outcomes using its drone network.
Swoop also partnered with governments and healthcare organisations across the Pacific and Europe, New Zealand, and even in Australia, a 2021 trial with Terry White Chemmart to deliver medicines within a 130km range of Goondiwindi on the Queensland-NSW border.
Two years ago Swoop began flying pathology samples from the Moreton Bay islands to Mater Pathology testing labs, cutting travel times by six hours.
The company has made more than 1.6 million deliveries across six continents.
The new Kite drone was developed Swoop’s Australian-based engineers to travel at up to 200km/h across a range of more than 180km on a single battery charge, with a 5kg payload.
Investors hopeful
A Main Sequence spokesperson said they team will work with the administrator to ensure the best outcome for stakeholders.
“After seeing the massive efforts by the Swoop Aero founders and team over the past few years, it’s sad to see the company go into administration,” they said.
“Despite the challenges, we strongly believe in the impact and opportunity of remote aerial drones for applications like medical deliveries and we still believe Swoop has developed one of the world’s leading technology capabilities in the autonomous drone space.
“As with venture capital broadly, deep technology product development and hardware manufacturing are both incredibly difficult challenges for any company, let alone burgeoning startups.”

Giant Leap managing partner Will Richardson
Giant Leap managing partner Will Richardson said it was “incredibly regrettable” that Swoop was placed in voluntary administration.
“We take pride in the achievements the company has made over the past seven years in establishing itself as a global leader in drone logistics,” he said.
“Swoop has completed thousands of flights and delivered millions of items, including vaccines, pathology tests, and medical supplies. One of Swoop Aero’s key strengths is its ability to deliver time-sensitive medical supplies, such as vaccines, to remote rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and Melanesia using state-of-the-art drones.
“We remain optimistic about the potential of Swoop Aero’s products and their capacity to continue making a positive impact in the future.”
Administrator Simon Nelson will hold the first creditors meeting in Melbourne on Thursday, October 24.
Creditors wanting to attend need to submit proofs and proxies to the Administrators by 4pm, October 23.
Queries from creditors, employees and others to Paul Kennedy at [email protected].
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