Inside $1.5B drone company XTEND

Between strict federal supply chain mandates, tariffs, and the push to replace foreign hardware, Western drone manufacturers have struggled to balance software sophistication with manufacturing scale. But XTEND is making a huge splash this year with massive growth in the U.S. and a merger that just last week put it on Wall Street.

XTEND is a drone company originally founded in Israel by entrepreneurs Aviv and Matteo Shapira. The duo previously built Replay Technologies (acquired by Intel in 2016 for $175 million)—alongside Israeli Drone Racing League founder Rubi Liani and defense expert Adir Tubi. Its merger with JFB Construction Holdings closed on Friday, Sept. 4. Upon closing, the combined entity rebranded as XTEND AI Robotics, Inc. and now trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “XTND”.

Originally, XTEND was a company focused on immersive gaming, user interfaces and extended reality (XR). They wanted to make flying a virtual drone feel entirely natural, using wearable displays and intuitive gesture-based controls.

But as is the case with many drone companies such as Skydio and Teal, XTEND pivoted to military. The XTEND team took what they knew about video games and applied it to miliary use case where they allowed operators with zero flight experience to fly complex indoor and outdoor missions using a VR headset and a handheld controller.

“When we left gaming a long time ago, defense became our biggest market. But the core software we created translates human intentions into actual AI actions or autonomy,” Aviv Shapira said in an interview with The Drone Girl.

So with that, here’s a look at this rising drone company, and what makes it different:

An open, platform-agnostic operating system

One of the biggest flaws in the Western drone market is hardware lock-in, where manufacturers commonly build a proprietary drone with a proprietary camera that only runs proprietary software. Instead, XTEND’s model, called XOS, is an open, platform-agnostic operating system.

Think of it kind of like being the Android of the robotics world. That means XTEND’s software sits on top of hardware, which could be anything from a tiny indoor micro-drone to a ground rover to a maritime vessel. The point is that operators buy a baseline drone and then download the capabilities they need, which could be anything from license plate recognition to indoor threat tracking to thermal mapping.

“Every one of the drone companies on the market today is doing something a bit different, but we are the software player,” Shapira said. “We are that Android of the market. If I’m a police officer and I need a drone that does license plate recognition, I go to the marketplace, the app store, and download that capability. So you buy the basic drone for a price similar to DJI, and then add more capabilities as you grow.”

Additionally, XTEND lets third-party developers build applications and hardware payloads on top of XOS.

“Connecting that human intention into an actionable mission is what we do,” Shapira said. “We’ve been working with more than 100 different partners to actually make that happen.”

Eric Trump investment — and then a merger

In February 2026, XTEND made global headlines when it announced a $1.5 billion merger with Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings (at the time listed on the Nasdaq as JFB).

The deal was backed by a $152 million strategic investment round, and included some high-profile investors, most notably Eric Trump (son of U.S. President Donald Trump) and Unusual Machines, a U.S. drone component maker that counts Donald Trump Jr. on its advisory board.

So why merge with a construction company?

“Everyone asks me that question!” Shapira said during our interview. “How can I build the most advanced, biggest, and most capable factory in the U.S. without a construction company? JFB is physically building our advanced manufacturing facilities.”

To meet strict NDAA compliance mandates and scale U.S. production, XTEND has built manufacturing facilities in Tampa, Florida, and Virginia. Beyond factory construction, Shapira noted that JFB’s work in school construction opens doors for XTEND’s long-term vision of indoor security robotics, alongside providing direct access to U.S. public capital markets.

Related read: Should you buy American drone stocks after the FCC ban?

How XTEND fits into the broader drone industry

XTEND’s rise is just another example of the shift we’re seeing in the drone industry away from foreign-made, off-the-shelf hardware to secure, allied-manufactured ecosystems.

Shapira said that a 100% domestic supply chain down to the silicon level (magnets, capacitors, and battery cells) will still likely take two to three years of scaling to match anywhere reasonably close to Chinese price points.

“It is possible to buy everything in the U.S. right now, just not at scale,” Shapira said. “Why is it cheaper in China? It’s not like they’re magicians — it’s just because they work at scale. The U.S. government needs to create scale in order to reduce prices for everything to fall into place.”

However, he said that the demand for trusted, software-defined robotics is there beyond the military niche and instead widespread among use cases such as law enforcement, infrastructure inspection, and private security.

While individual domestic components can cost significantly more, Shapira estimates that total finished domestic drone costs will likely settle at around 3x compared to Asian alternatives during the transition. But he emphasizes that the demand for trusted, software-defined robotics extends far beyond the military niche into law enforcement, search and rescue, infrastructure inspection, and private security.

“We believe that the next workforce of humanity needs to be robotic,” Shapira said. “We cannot keep sending people into these very dangerous missions.”

What do you think about XTEND’s open software approach and public market debut? Let me know in the comments below!

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