Inteliports is Building the Infrastructure Drone Companies Depend On

The hardest part of drone delivery isn’t flying, it’s landing.

Most companies chase longer range or faster drones. Inteliports is focused on what happens before and after the flight – where drones take off, recharge, load, and fit into real logistics systems.

Instead of building another aircraft, the UK startup is building the infrastructure layer drones depend on. Its modular ports look like compact containers but act as fully automated depots. Drones land, swap batteries, collect payloads, and head out again without human help.

It’s a quieter, more grounded kind of innovation. While others are drawing skies full of delivery drones, Inteliports is figuring out how they’ll actually work day to day.

From robotics lab to runway

Inteliports didn’t start in aerospace. The company spun out of Motion Robotics in 2021, led by father-and-son team Dennis and David Majoe, alongside architect David Park. What began as a robotics project quickly turned into a mission to fix the missing link in drone logistics.

Dennis brought decades of experience in robotics and electronics. David grew up in that world but added a layer of architectural thinking, seeing drones not just as machines, but as part of the built environment. When Park joined, that mix of design and engineering evolved into something new – drone infrastructure you could move, replicate, and scale.

Their first real-world test came close to home. Working with the NHS on England’s south coast, the team flew medical samples between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, proving that drones could handle sensitive, short-haul deliveries safely and efficiently.

That small experiment shaped how Inteliports thinks today – every successful flight depends as much on what’s on the ground as what’s in the air.

The missing layer in drone logistics

There’s no shortage of companies building drones. What’s missing is a system that keeps them flying, the ground layer that makes autonomy actually work.

That’s where Inteliports steps in. Their focus isn’t on airframes or flight controllers but on the overlooked part of the process – where drones land, recharge, and reload without anyone standing nearby.

At the center of their setup is the Inteliport GO, a 20-foot shipping container turned into a fully automated droneport. Inside, a small robotic rover handles loading and unloading. Batteries charge on their own. The roof slides open when a drone approaches, then closes again to protect the hardware from weather. It’s compact, self-contained, and ready to deploy almost anywhere.

Paired with Inteliports’ Titan drones, heavy-lift multicopters that can carry up to 25 kg over 40 km and fly under CAA-approved heavy-lift licenses, each container becomes a node in what the team calls an “airbridge” network.

Need a delivery hub near a hospital, a construction site, or an island dock? Truck in a container, plug it into power and data, and it’s live within hours. No permanent buildings or dedicated crew is required. What you get is the automated infrastructure that makes drone logistics practical instead of experimental.

Automation as the differentiator

What makes Inteliports stand out isn’t just that its drones can fly on their own, but that everything else around them can too.

At the center of the system is AIIDA, the platform’s mission manager. It plans flights, monitors airspace, handles battery cycles, and assigns each droneport its next task. If one Titan is charging, AIIDA reroutes another. If weather shifts or traffic picks up, it automatically adjusts schedules to keep deliveries running smoothly.

On the ground, a small rover inside each port moves parcels between lockers and drones, locking them in place before launch and retrieving new ones when they return. No crews, no forklifts, no manual preparation.

Connectivity comes through Vodafone’s Pairpoint platform, which links each port to a private 5G or satellite network. That connection keeps every drone visible to regulators and allows true beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations – the holy grail of commercial drone logistics.

All this replaces the old logistics sprawl – vans shuttling between depots, staff waiting on site, and endless loading delays. As CEO David Majoe put it in one interview, “We’re making the airspace as usable as the road network.”

Testing the airbridges

Before any network can scale, it has to prove it works in the real world, not just in simulations or test videos. Inteliports has been doing exactly that.

Their first major showcase came at Snowdonia Aerospace Centre in North Wales, where the team demonstrated fully autonomous BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flights using the Inteliport GO system. The trial proved that the container port could handle drone arrivals, charging, and departures without on-site staff.

Next came the Isle of Wight pilot, a project that connects the island with mainland suppliers through short-range “airbridges.” Up to six daily flights carry goods across the Solent, handing them off to e-bike couriers for the final stretch. It’s a small but elegant example of what multimodal, zero-emission logistics could look like. Drones for distance, bikes for streets, and no vans in between.

Behind these tests is a growing network of backers – Connected Places Catapult, Innovate UK, the ESA PORTAL program, EIT Urban Mobility, and Barclays Eagle Labs have all funded or supported Inteliports’ trials.

In a country that’s often cautious with new flight tech, Inteliports has done something rare. They’ve built trust with both the UK Civil Aviation Authority and local councils. Real flights, real permits, real deliveries, that’s how they’re earning their runway.

Business model and go-to-market

Inteliports isn’t trying to sell drones to hobbyists or build a consumer brand. Its focus is entirely B2B and B2G – helping logistics operators, healthcare networks, and public agencies add aerial delivery to existing supply chains.

Clients can buy or lease the company’s modular droneports and drones, or simply plug into Inteliports’ managed network through a service contract. In practice, that means a local council or delivery provider can deploy a ready-to-run droneport, connect it to Inteliports’ platform, and start operating flights within days, without in-house pilots or engineering teams needed.

The model fits early markets where autonomy already makes sense:

• Healthcare logistics, where every minute counts and short, repeated flights pay off.
• Island and rural communities, where roads or ferries make deliveries slow and expensive.
• Construction and industrial sites, which need fast, high-value part deliveries without downtime.

Internally, Inteliports calls this “Droneport-as-a-Service.” Each unit is a self-contained logistics hub that can be deployed, relocated, or scaled as demand grows. Customers pay per flight, per site, or through recurring network fees – a flexible setup that mirrors how cloud infrastructure or EV charging networks bill usage.

And the ecosystem around it is already taking shape. Vodafone provides connectivity through its Pairpoint platform. Local councils grant site access and permits for trials. And research partners like the European Space Agency support ongoing R&D on automation, charging, and multimodal integration.

Rather than compete with couriers or carriers, Inteliports positions itself as the infrastructure partner that makes aerial logistics viable. They’re the quiet, invisible layer beneath the drones.

Funding and traction

For a company building hardware, software, and infrastructure all at once, Inteliports has stayed impressively lean. The team is still small, fewer than ten people, but it’s managed to punch above its weight by tapping into some of the UK and Europe’s most competitive innovation programs.

So far, the company’s growth has been funded almost entirely through non-dilutive grants and partnerships, not venture capital. Support has come from Innovate UK, the UK Department for Transport’s Freight Innovation Fund, the European Space Agency’s PORTAL program, EIT Urban Mobility, and Barclays Eagle Labs.

In total, these programs represent well over a million pounds in combined backing, a solid endorsement for a young startup operating in a heavily regulated sector.

Each of these wins has given Inteliports direct access to policymakers, city councils, and enterprise partners – the same people who will eventually buy and operate its technology. That’s been key to building trust in an industry where regulatory approval and reliability matter more than speed or hype.

Now, with trials completed and technology proven, Inteliports sits at an inflection point. It’s no longer a research project, but a full-fledged company with validated tech, clear use cases, and growing momentum to commercialize.

Where Inteliports fits in the drone race

The drone delivery space is crowded, but not crowded with companies doing what Inteliports does. Most players are obsessed with aircraft performance or headline-grabbing pilot projects. Inteliports is focused on the layer no one else seems to want – the ground infrastructure that quietly keeps those drones flying.

Zipline built its reputation on long-range, fixed-wing aircraft for medical deliveries in Africa and the U.S. It’s a master of scale, but its model depends on custom planes and central distribution hubs.

Skyports operates on the opposite end. They design sleek, permanent vertiports for passenger air taxis and future urban aviation. It’s ambitious, but infrastructure-heavy and years from everyday use.

Percepto takes another route altogether, specializing in inspection drones for industrial sites. Their technology is powerful but built for data collection, not logistics.

Inteliports sits in the middle of all that – infrastructure-first, portable, and autonomous. Its containerized droneports and AI mission manager form the connective tissue between the air and the ground, linking drones with real supply chains.

If Skyports is building airports for the sky, Inteliports is quietly building the charging stack for the skies, a network of smart, modular nodes that make autonomous delivery practical, repeatable, and ready for scale.

Regulatory green lights

Flying drones is one thing, but getting permission to do it – repeatedly, autonomously, and with payloads – is another story. Inteliports has managed to clear that hurdle earlier than most.

The company holds UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) authorization for heavy-lift missions, allowing its Titan drones to carry payloads of up to 25 kg over populated areas. That’s a rare license for a startup and a sign of strong compliance from day one.

Its trials at Snowdonia Aerospace Centre and the Isle of Wight were both conducted under official BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) permissions, proving the team’s ability to operate safely in real conditions, and not just test zones.

Inteliports’ modular approach also fits neatly into the UK’s drone-corridor strategy, which aims to link test ranges, logistics hubs, and rural communities through regulated air routes. Because each port is standardized and self-contained, the approval process for new sites could eventually become much faster.

The next challenge is maintaining that regulatory confidence as the network grows. Each new site means new local authorities, new airspace conditions, and new data requirements. But so far, Inteliports has built what every autonomous aviation company wants most – a track record of real flights, real oversight, and zero red flags.

What’s next for Inteliport?

Inteliports is still small, but its roadmap is anything but modest. The team is wrapping up the Isle of Wight pilot, which runs through early 2025 and will give them the data they need to prove consistent, real-world performance.

Next comes refinement. The focus is on making the setup process almost instant – automating data onboarding, grid connections, and local airspace checks so a new droneport can go live in hours instead of weeks.

The company is also working on grid-ready charging integration, which would let each port draw or store power intelligently, minimizing downtime and energy waste.

Once those pieces click, the plan is to expand across the UK and into Europe, starting with small regional networks that link hospitals, ports, and distribution hubs. The endgame is a scalable framework, a connected system of hundreds of autonomous droneports forming a quiet logistics web above existing infrastructure.

And beyond that? The founders see potential far past parcels. The same ports and communication systems could one day support passenger-class eVTOLs or other autonomous aerial vehicles. For now, though, Inteliports is keeping its sights close to the ground, perfecting the network that makes everything else possible.

The quiet foundation of autonomous delivery

Inteliports is betting that the future of drone logistics won’t be decided by who builds the fastest aircraft, but by who builds the best infrastructure.

Every port they deploy brings autonomy a step closer to reality. A self-contained node that doesn’t need a pilot, a warehouse, or a full crew to keep deliveries running.

If they can replicate that at scale, drone logistics could finally move from experimental to economical. It’s a practical vision for a space often dominated by hype.

The real question now is: will droneports become the next charging stations, quietly everywhere, and so normal we forget they’re even there?