In 2021, AirWhiteWhale was founded in China, which focused on the development of an unmanned aircraft designed to carry up to 5 tons of cargo between regional airports. Now she is trying to raise up to $ 22.1 million in capital for further research on the creation of such an aircraft.

The developed W5000 cargo drone has a maximum takeoff weight of 10.8 tons and is capable of taking on board up to 5 tons of cargo. It can transport cargo by air over a distance of 1200 to 2600 km. The cargo compartment is designed to accommodate 65 cubic meters of various goods and their easy and fast loading and unloading. Unmanned cargo planes are cheaper to manufacture than manned ones, since it is not required to equip jobs for the crew, to ensure optimal temperature conditions in the cabin and its tightness. In the end, you can abandon the compartments for purely domestic purposes such as toilets.

According to Hu Zhendong, the founder of the company, who has an aircraft engineering background and worked at Airbus, the Chinese aircraft industry has almost all the necessary resources to start producing unmanned cargo aircraft. Chinese specialists have advanced far in the creation of 5G networks and geolocation systems, as well as in the development of autopilot systems. In October last year, a scale prototype (1:3) of the W5000 drone successfully completed a test flight with takeoff and landing at one of the airports in Inner Mongolia.