Aviern

Aviern was founded in 2026 and joined Y Combinator’s Fall batch that year. YC lists it as a Los Angeles company, with Aaron Epstein as its primary partner.⁠[1]

A joint LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry post by the company and Agarwal described autonomous aircraft inspecting pipeline and utility corridors for leaks, encroachments and other hazards. It sought discussions with oil, gas and utility integrity-management teams.⁠[2]

Agarwal said on X that an aircraft went from design to flight in under 30 days, and that the next would be twice the size with a shorter development cycle. The founder’s progress statement gave no payload, endurance or commercial-operating results.⁠[3]

Co-founder and CEO Kush Agarwal studied aerospace engineering at UCLA, taught drone engineering and led a student autonomous-aerial-systems team. Before Aviern, his work included drone operations at Matter Intelligence and AI-agent integration at Fetch.ai.⁠[4]

Co-founder and CTO Arvin Singh taught aircraft engineering at UCLA and led subteams within its Design/Build/Fly club. His YC biography also describes several years of making videos about home-built engineering projects.⁠[5]

UAS@UCLA’s team page lists Agarwal as vice president of software. The student group designs, manufactures and tests drone hardware and software, with projects in solar aircraft, 3D mapping and drone delivery, documenting his earlier work in aerial robotics.⁠[6]

The YC profile says the team built a scaled aircraft capable of autonomous taxiing, takeoff, flight and landing in two months, while working on a larger 50-pound aircraft.⁠[1]

The website reports more than 150 autonomous miles flown by its demonstrator using the in-house AviernOS software stack.⁠[7]

The A1000’s stated design targets are a 1,000-pound payload, 1,000-mile range and approximately $100 hourly operating cost. It uses automotive gasoline or avgas and is intended for short, unprepared strips without onboard crew. These are company design specifications.⁠[7]

Proposed applications include hub-to-airport feeder freight and defense resupply. Omitting the cockpit, seats and life-support systems leaves fuselage space for cargo.⁠[8]

The company plans autonomous retrofit flights by the first quarter of 2027 and a new cargo aircraft’s first flight by the first quarter of 2028, before commercial operations.⁠[8]