Manna Drone Delivery Launches in Tulsa: First US City

Manna Air Delivery launched its first commercial drone delivery service in the United States in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on August 12, 2026, according to KRMG. The Irish company now delivers restaurant meals and groceries within roughly a two-mile radius of its first air base near 15th Street and Utica Avenue, with a local factory and six more US cities planned by the end of 2027.

Background

Manna is a Dublin-founded drone delivery startup that has spent seven years and more than 250,000 regulated commercial flights building autonomous delivery networks in Ireland, Finland, and the US, according to DroneDJ. Rather than landing, its aircraft hover above the delivery point and lower packages on a tether — the same basic approach used by Wing and Zipline, the two dominant players in drones in medicine and retail delivery in the US.

The company's push into the US accelerated this year. Manna closed a $50 million Series B round in April 2026, bringing its total funding to roughly $110 million, and brought on former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as executive chair. That cash arrived as Manna's home market turned difficult: the company announced a "strategic pause" on Irish operations in June 2026, citing a lack of clear planning regulations for drone flight paths. Founder and CEO Bobby Healy has been blunt about the pivot, telling reporters, "The United States has the market that everybody wants."

Why Tulsa

Tulsa is not Manna's first US operation — the company has flown in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone near Dallas-Fort Worth since 2023 — but it is the company's first full commercial launch outside that testbed, and the anchor for a much larger bet. Manna plans to open a manufacturing facility in Tulsa within roughly a year, with local hiring eventually reaching 1,000 jobs, and to grow its Oklahoma operations team to 200–300 people over the next 12 months.

At launch, the service covers a limited area around Manna's first Tulsa air base, with a short list of partner businesses — including Andolini's, Sapori, and Perea Coffee — available through the Manna Air Delivery app. Terri O'Keeffe, Manna's director of corporate affairs, said the company had "received an amazing welcome from the people of the Tulsa Metro area" ahead of the launch. More restaurants and stores are expected to join in the coming weeks and months as the service area widens.

What This Means for Drone Pilots

Tulsa's launch adds a third national operator — alongside Wing and Zipline — running fixed-wing and multirotor delivery fleets under the FAA's Beyond Visual Line of Sight framework rather than the standard Part 107 rules covered in most US drone regulations. None of these programs open new certification paths for individual Part 107 pilots; Manna, like its competitors, operates its own fleet under its own FAA authorizations, with remote operators monitoring multiple aircraft rather than piloting one drone each.

The bigger signal is for the wider industry: Manna's decision to build manufacturing capacity in Oklahoma, rather than import hardware, mirrors a broader push by US regulators and lawmakers this year to favor domestic drone production. Commercial pilots working in inspection, mapping, or logistics should expect delivery operators' safety and flight-volume data — now compounding across three major US networks — to keep shaping how the FAA finalizes broader BVLOS rules for the rest of the industry.

Sources: KRMG | DroneDJ | TechCrunch