Lachy Groom backs Indian startup aiming to keep aircraft aloft for a year
Prominent solo investor Lachy Groom has backed a Bengaluru startup attempting an ambitious feat: keeping an aircraft in the sky for more than a year by harvesting energy from ocean winds. Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, a technique albatrosses use to extract energy from the wind.
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Key Facts
- Fact 1: Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, a technique albatrosses use to extract energy from the wind.
- Fact 2: Groom decided he wanted to invest within the first 30 minutes of their first meeting, Sanghvi told TechCrunch.
- Fact 3: It did complete a recent of its test of its autonomous flight system over the Bay of Bengal in which the aircraft autonomously completed seven O-shaped cycles at more than 62 miles per hour, flying within one meter of the water’s surface.
- Fact 4: “For me, it came down to believing Samay and the Alteon team are the ones to figure them out.” Sanghvi began working on what would become Alteon straight out of high school in 2023, learning to build aircraft by making — and crashing — radio-controlled models before developing early prototypes.
Prominent solo investor Lachy Groom has backed a Bengaluru startup attempting an ambitious feat: keeping an aircraft in the sky for more than a year by harvesting energy from ocean winds. Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, a technique albatrosses use to extract energy from the wind.
Groom decided he wanted to invest within the first 30 minutes of their first meeting, Sanghvi told TechCrunch. Conventional aircraft need to carry the fuel or battery power required for a flight. Alteon is trying to break that limitation by designing its small, fixed-wing autonomous aircraft that can extract energy from wind shear above the ocean through dynamic soaring — a maneuver in which an aircraft repeatedly moves between layers of air traveling at different speeds.
(Original synthesis pending human/AI review — generated by the stub provider by selecting real sentences from the source material, not by writing new analysis or commentary.)
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