Prominent solo investor Lachy Groom has invested in a Bengaluru startup that aims to keep an aircraft aloft for more than a year by harvesting energy from ocean winds.
Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, the flight technique albatrosses use to extract energy from wind shear. Sanghvi told Lakbima News Groom decided to invest within the first 30 minutes of their initial meeting.
Conventional aircraft must carry the fuel or battery power required for a flight. Alteon is designing small, fixed-wing autonomous aircraft that aim to extract energy from wind shear above the ocean through dynamic soaring, a maneuver in which the aircraft moves between layers of air traveling at different speeds.
Sanghvi told Lakbima News long-endurance aircraft would enable persistent maritime surveillance and other sustained missions governments now rely on satellites or crewed aircraft to perform. Alteon plans to begin with maritime surveillance, giving authorities near-real-time visibility into activity in their waters.
The initial design is for an aircraft with around a three meter wingspan that will fly close to the ocean surface, climb and turn into faster-moving air, then repeat the cycle to gain energy from the wind. Sanghvi said the company plans to use propellers as turbines to convert some of that energy into electricity and recharge onboard batteries.
The company has not yet demonstrated that its aircraft can sustain flight using only energy harvested through dynamic soaring. Sanghvi provided Lakbima News flight logs and telemetry from a recent test over the Bay of Bengal showing the aircraft completed seven O-shaped cycles at more than 62 miles per hour while flying within one meter of the water surface.
Alteon’s next milestone is what Sanghvi calls energy-neutral dynamic soaring, when the aircraft would fly continuously with its propulsion off, extracting enough wind energy to remain aloft.
Dr. Gabriel Bousquet, a Silicon Valley aerospace and robotics engineer who researched dynamic soaring during his PhD at MIT, told Lakbima News Alteon’s low altitude flight over water is a promising first result. He added the harder task will be proving the aircraft can reliably extract enough energy from real world winds to sustain flight for extended periods.
Flying low enough to harvest that energy safely is difficult, Bousquet said. The aircraft must contend with turbulence, waves, spray, rain and changing light, while continuously sensing and reacting to a moving ocean surface.
Dr. Bharath Swaminathan, who earned his PhD from IIT Madras studying the stability of dynamic soaring, said the underlying physics is established and called Alteon’s effort commendable. Keeping an aircraft airborne for several days using dynamic soaring would be a significant technical step, he told Lakbima News.
Swaminathan added that large scale wind conditions may be predictable, but local wind shear and turbulence can vary substantially. That variability can prevent an aircraft from continuously extracting energy; some problems may only appear in extended real world testing.
Groom acknowledged the technical risk behind his investment. “Ambitious problems are always going to come with risks,” he told Lakbima News. “For me, it came down to believing Samay and the Alteon team are the ones to figure them out.”
Sanghvi began developing the idea straight out of high school in 2023, learning to build aircraft by making and crashing radio controlled models before developing early prototypes. He formally founded Alteon in 2025 and received early backing from Emergent Ventures and 1517.
Alteon now has a team of 20 in Bengaluru and operates from a 10,000 square foot facility. The startup is building four to five aircraft a week for testing and has conducted more than 200 test flights in the past 30 days, Sanghvi said.
