Zipwire Propulsion
Brushless motors for unmanned aircraft.
Zipwire is building an automated motor factory in Ogden, Utah, focused on brushless motors, matched controllers, and the production capacity American programs need.
Why Zipwire
American motor capacity has to grow.
Supply
Domestic production of these motors is limited, while much of the existing industry has developed overseas.
Scale
American unmanned-aircraft programs increasingly need reliable, repeatable motor production in meaningful volume.
Compliance
Programs increasingly require documented sourcing, traceability, and compliant critical materials and components.
Zipwire is being built to solve all three with motor engineering, automated production, documented supply chains, and industrial capacity.
We do not think domestic production should require customers to accept worse performance, limited volume or an uneconomic price.
The job is to compete on the motor and on the manufacturing.
What We Build
Motors designed to be manufactured.
Zipwire is developing brushless motors for unmanned aircraft, with an initial product family spanning 24 mm to 43 mm stators.
Our motors are designed around the requirements of the aircraft they will power and the factory that will produce them. That means performance, cost, materials, manufacturability and repeatability are considered together from the beginning.
Initial motor family
- 24 mm to 43 mm stators
- Application-specific windings
- Matched motor controllers
- Designs for multirotor and fixed-wing aircraft
- Interceptor-class propulsion in development
Manufacturing
Ogden, Utah
Zipwire is being built for industrial production.
Our factory in Ogden is being designed around automated and highly repeatable manufacturing processes. The objective is not to make a small number of expensive specialty motors. It is to make very good motors, consistently, at the volumes American aircraft manufacturers require.
Motor design and manufacturing engineering happen together. A design that performs well but cannot be produced reliably at scale is not finished.
The same is true of the factory. We will bring processes online deliberately, qualify them, measure them and improve them before adding complexity.
That is how we intend to scale.
Supply Chain
Traceability is part of the product.
Customers need to know more than whether a motor performs.
They need to know what is in it, where critical materials came from and whether the product meets the sourcing requirements that apply to their program.
Zipwire is designing that work into the business from the beginning.
We are building a documented U.S. and allied supply chain for critical materials and components, with particular attention to magnets, electrical steel, bearings, copper and electronics. Where a program has specific sourcing requirements, we intend to be able to show our work.
DFARS restrictions on magnet sourcing begin taking effect in January 2027. We are designing our supply chain and documentation around those requirements.
Mine to magnet to motor.
For critical materials, provenance cannot begin at the loading dock. It has to extend through the supply chain.
Our goal is straightforward: know where the important things came from, document them and build motors our customers can verify.
- Mine
- Oxide / Metal
- Magnet
- Rotor
- Motor
- Aircraft
Company
Building an American propulsion company.
Zipwire Propulsion is a manufacturing company based in Ogden, Utah.
We are beginning with brushless electric motors and controllers for unmanned aircraft. Our first job is clear: build excellent motors, build them reliably and build them at scale.
That is what we are working on now.
Careers
Help us build the factory.
We are assembling the founding engineering and manufacturing team in Ogden.
Early employees will have unusual influence over the motors we design, the processes we develop and the kind of company Zipwire becomes.
We are particularly interested in people who have designed electric motors, industrialized electromechanical products, automated manufacturing processes or built production systems that have to work reliably at volume.
If you think you should be part of the team, write to jkap@zipwire.com and tell us what you have built.
Contact
Talk to Zipwire
Programs and OEMs
bd@zipwire.comCompany and general inquiries
jkap@zipwire.comZipwire Propulsion
Ogden, Utah