▸ 27 August 2026 · Dr Joni Sytsma
Rocket Fast Drones joins the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200
TechCrunch has selected Rocket Fast Drones for the Startup Battlefield 200, the cohort of 200 companies chosen from thousands of applicants to exhibit at Disrupt 2026. Disrupt runs 13 to 15 October at Moscone West in San Francisco.
Battlefield is TechCrunch’s curated list, and 200 companies are picked from thousands of applications worldwide. Past alumni include Dropbox, Cloudflare, Discord and Trello. We are in the space and defence category, and we are delighted to be going.
What we are doing there
We exhibit for all three days at Moscone West, and we pitch on the Startup Battlefield Pitch Showcase Stage. Every company in the 200 is eligible for the Disrupt Cup and the equity free prize that goes with it.
We are taking the aircraft. Rocket Fast Drones builds small, high speed, tube launched VTOL aircraft: the aircraft takes off vertically out of its own shipping tube, transitions to wing borne flight, and lands vertically again with no runway, catapult or net. It is aimed at critical logistics, where the payload is small, the distance is real and the clock is the constraint.
The numbers we will put in front of people are the ones we have flown. Demonstrated cruise is 143 km/h and demonstrated maximum is 179 km/h. Our longest single flight to date is 12.2 km, flown over six laps on 1 July 2026, landing with 40 per cent of the battery still in reserve. Anything simulated or targeted gets labelled as such, in San Francisco the same as anywhere else.
Why San Francisco matters to us
Disrupt puts several thousand investors, operators and journalists in one building for three days. We are a Brisbane company, and the people who fund and buy technology at this scale mostly are not in Brisbane. A week of conversations in the room is worth a great deal more than a year of introductions by email, and we intend to use all of it. If you are going to be at Disrupt and you want to talk, come and find us.
Media enquiries: joni.sytsma@rocketfastdrones.com