Elistair company profile
Elistair builds tethered drone systems for persistent aerial surveillance and communications. Its tethered UAVs and power stations provide long-duration overwatch for defence, public safety, border security, event monitoring and emergency-response teams.
Facts
- Segment: Defense
- Country: France
- Founded: 2014
- Website: https://elistair.com
Profile sections
- Summary
- Market context
- Facts
- Funding
- Investors
- Commercial
- Context / Market Position
- Events
- Team
- Relationships
- Context tags
- Customers and deployments
- Sources
Summary
Elistair builds tethered drone systems for persistent aerial surveillance and communications. Its tethered UAVs and power stations provide long-duration overwatch for defence, public safety, border security, event monitoring and emergency-response teams.
Market context
Elistair occupies a specific aerial-robotics niche where endurance and persistent observation matter more than free-flight mobility. Its tethered systems give defence and security users continuous aerial coverage for bases, borders, events and maritime or port-security environments. Tethered UAV / ISR drone systems integrated with UGV and defense platforms.
Facts
- Website: https://elistair.com
- HQ: Lyon, France
- Founded: 2014
- Segment: Defense
- Known funding rounds: 2
Funding
- 2021-03-30 - Series B - $6M - Elistair raises EUR 5M Series B for tethered drone systems - source: elistair.com
- 2018-01-17 - Funding round - $2M - Elistair raises EUR 2M for tethered drone growth - source: elistair.com
Investors
- Starquest Capital - Participant - Vc - 2 funding events - repeat backer - first seen 2018-01-17 - latest 2021-03-30
- Omnes - Participant - Unknown - 1 funding event - first seen 2021-03-30
Commercial
2 commercial events; 1 contract award; 1 commercial order; latest event 2025-05-13
- 2025-05-13 - Commercial order - Elistair to supply 13 tethered drones for Hellenic Fire Service operations
- 2025-02-12 - Contract award - Elistair awarded EUR 3M contract for small tethered UAS by allied military force - source: elistair.com
Tethered drone systems for persistent surveillance
Elistair builds tethered drone systems for persistent surveillance, security and tactical communications.
- Target environment: Military bases, borders, public events, ports, maritime-security zones, emergency operations.
- Deployment model: Hardware-led tethered UAS sales with product families spanning tether stations, drones and dronebox systems.
- Customer context: Armed forces, law-enforcement agencies, homeland-security teams, emergency responders.
- Workflow context: Persistent surveillance, perimeter monitoring, tactical ISR, communications relay, event security.
- Commercial maturity: Commercial tethered-drone manufacturer with deployments across more than 65 countries.
- Market position: Elistair is a specialist tethered-UAS supplier between conventional drone manufacturers and fixed surveillance towers.
- Adoption constraints: Adoption depends on mission fit, tether logistics, payload needs, regulatory approvals.
- Adjacent context: Adjacent context includes defence autonomy and critical-infrastructure security.
- Source confidence: high
Events
- 2026-04-30 - Capability - Elistair Khronos tethered DroneBox participates in ORION 2026 military exercise - Elistair's Khronos automated tethered DroneBox participated in ORION 2026, France's large joint military exerci…
- 2025-06-03 - Partnership - Elistair joins EU-backed SMAUG maritime security project - Elistair joined the SMAUG maritime security project funded by the European Union.
- 2021-03-30 - Funding - Elistair raises EUR 5M Series B for tethered drone systems - Omnes and Starquest Capital backed the round.
- 2018-01-17 - Funding - Elistair raises EUR 2M for tethered drone growth - Starquest Capital participated in the financing with existing investors.
Team
- Guilhem de Marliave - Co-founder - Co-founder of Elistair tethered-drone business and persistent-surveillance product direction.
- Timothée Penet - Co-founder & CTO - Technical leader for Elistair tethered-drone systems.
Relationships
- Tethered UAS customer - Elistair received a EUR 3 million contract to supply small tethered UAS to an allied military force.
Context tags
- Tethered Drone Systems - Peer Group
- Persistent Surveillance - Workflow
- Tactical ISR - Workflow
- Perimeter Security - Customer Environment
- Automated DroneBox - Stack Layer
- Maritime Security - Customer Environment
- Tethered drone OEM - Stack Layer
- Public safety operations - Customer Environment
- Tethered drone ISR systems - Peer Group
- Persistent tethered surveillance - Workflow
- Defence customers - Customer Environment
Customers and deployments
- Commercial Rollout - EUR 3 million tethered UAS contract - 2025-02-12 - Allied military force - Elistair received a EUR 3 million contract to supply small tethered UAS to an allied military force for persistent surveill…
Elistair canonical Korthos profile