Lachy Groom Backs Indian Startup Aiming to Enhance Aircraft Uptime for a Year

Renowned solo investor Lachy Groom has put funds into a Bengaluru startup that aims to achieve an unprecedented milestone: keeping an aircraft flying for over a year by utilizing energy from ocean winds.

Alteon, co-founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, revealed on Tuesday that it has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Groom, with support from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft that leverage dynamic soaring, a technique used by albatrosses to harness energy from wind currents. Sanghvi mentioned to TechCrunch that Groom decided to invest within the first 30 minutes of their initial conversation.

Conventional aircraft depend on fuel or battery power for operation. Alteon aims to break this limitation by designing small, fixed-wing autonomous aircraft that can capture energy from wind shear over the ocean through dynamic soaring—an approach where an aircraft maneuvers between air layers moving at different speeds.

“Once you create aircraft capable of staying aloft for more than a year, the possibilities become limitless,” Sanghvi told TechCrunch. Alteon plans to initially deploy these aircraft for maritime surveillance, offering governments real-time insights into activities in their waters.

The initial design features an aircraft with a wingspan of about three meters, operating near the ocean’s surface, ascending and maneuvering through faster air layers in a cycle to collect energy from the wind. Ultimately, Alteon aims to use the aircraft’s propellers as turbines to convert some of that energy into electricity, replenishing onboard batteries, Sanghvi explained.

However, the startup still needs to demonstrate that its aircraft can maintain flight powered by energy collected through dynamic soaring. Recently, it accomplished a test of its autonomous flight system over the Bay of Bengal, where the aircraft successfully completed seven O-shaped cycles at speeds exceeding 62 miles per hour, flying just a meter above the water’s surface.

Alteon’s next critical goal will be what Sanghvi refers to as “energy-neutral dynamic soaring.” Achieving this would allow the aircraft to fly indefinitely with its propulsion systems off, harvesting enough energy from the wind to stay aloft.

Dr. Gabriel Bousquet, an aerospace and robotics engineer from Silicon Valley who studied dynamic soaring during his PhD at MIT, characterized Alteon’s low-altitude flights over water as a “promising initial result.” However, he stressed that the more daunting challenge lies in demonstrating that the aircraft can continuously gather enough energy from real wind conditions for extended flight durations.

Flying low enough to effectively capture that energy is notably difficult, Bousquet explained to TechCrunch, as the aircraft needs to navigate turbulence, waves, spray, rain, and varying lighting conditions while consistently sensing and responding to a dynamic ocean surface.

Dr. Bharath Swaminathan, who earned his PhD from IIT Madras while investigating the stability of dynamic soaring, pointed out that the underlying physics is well understood and praised Alteon’s initiative. Keeping an aircraft in the air for several days using dynamic soaring would be “a significant milestone and an impressive accomplishment,” he remarked to TechCrunch.

Nevertheless, Swaminathan cautioned that while large-scale wind patterns may be predictable, localized wind shear and turbulence can fluctuate significantly, posing challenges for an aircraft’s ability to continually gather energy from the wind. Many of these issues may only become apparent through actual flight tests.

Groom acknowledged the technical risks tied to the investment. “Ambitious projects will always have inherent risks,” he told TechCrunch. “Ultimately, it came down to my trust in Samay and the Alteon team to address these challenges.”

Sanghvi began working on what would become Alteon right after finishing high school in 2023, learning aircraft construction through building — and crashing — remote-controlled models before developing early prototypes. He formally launched Alteon in 2025, backed initially by Emergent Ventures and 1517.

Currently, Alteon has a team of 20 individuals operating from a 10,000-square-foot facility in Bengaluru. The startup is crafting four to five aircraft a week for testing purposes and has conducted over 200 test flights in the past 30 days, according to Sanghvi.