Flytrex, the autonomous drone delivery startup, is betting that a big-name hire can help it finally break through. The company has tapped former Waze CEO and Google vice president Noam Bardin as executive chairman, a move that could give the startup credibility at a moment when the industry faces both new opportunities and longstanding challenges.

Bardin, who turned Waze into a navigation platform with more than 150 million monthly users before its $1.1 billion sale to Google, is stepping in. Bardin joins Flytrex just as it secured a key regulatory win: the FAA recently granted the company Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) approval. That’s key in effectively opening the door for its drones to operate in 37 of the largest metro areas in the U.S. — a potential reach of more than 100 million people.

“This is about the users, not the technology,” Bardin said in an interview with The Drone Girl. “Users don’t care about technology, they care about the service.”

He said Flytrex will first scale in Dallas-Fort Worth, where it already operates, with the goal of adding dozens of new sites this year and covering the entire metro area within 12 months.

Flying high alongside Wing and Zipline

Despite the fresh leadership and regulatory momentum, Flytrex will have to prove it can stand strong against bigger, better-funded rivals. Alphabet-owned Wing and longtime competitor Zipline are already running large-scale drone delivery operations in the U.S. and abroad, with multi-vertical strategies that extend beyond food.

For example, Zipline is a huge player in medical deliveries, primarily in developing countries including Rwanda and Ghana. In 2025, Zipline marked its 100 million mile delivery milestone.

Flytrex, by contrast, is narrowing in on a single use case.

“We are focused solely on food delivery,” Bardin said. “We are optimized for what it takes to deliver meals from restaurants to suburban consumers. We also operate our own, vertically-integrated branded service.”

Flytrex made its name way back in 2017 when it conducted food deliveries via drone in Iceland. A couple years later, it announced that it would expand to the U.S., starting with North Carolina. Since then, it’s grown to other regions including Texas, which is largely considered the leading U.S. state for drone delivery.

Today, Flytrex works with companies including DoorDash (which also works with Wing.

The economics question

Drone delivery skeptics point to one unresolved issue: cost. For years, pilot projects have been subsidized, with profitability elusive. Bardin wouldn’t share financials but argued that the timing is right.

“Across autonomy we are at the inflection point where unit economics are aligning to make massive growth and scale achievable,” he said.

Whether that’s enough to bring down the price of a hot meal compared to a DoorDash driver remains to be seen. Suburban sprawl, regulatory friction and consumer adoption are all potential hurdles.

Can Waze’s playbook work for drones?

Flytrex is betting Bardin’s experience at Waze — scaling a consumer service by focusing relentlessly on user pain points — can be applied to drone delivery.

“We are laser focused on solving their real pain points,” he said.

The appointment signals a fresh push for a company that, despite more than 200,000 deliveries to date, still lags behind Wing and Zipline in visibility and scope. The FAA’s BVLOS approval could level the playing field. The proposed rule to enable routine BVLOS drone operations should also remove red tape.

But history suggests that regulatory wins alone don’t guarantee a sustainable business.

For now, Flytrex is wagering that food delivery, with its mix of urgency and high margins, is the right place to start.

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