Saving Lives In Sky: Rice’s Medical Cargo Drone Startup Raises $1.85M
A student-founded startup at Rice University in Houston has raised $1.85 million in preseed funding for its medical cargo drone startup, built to move sensitive medical supplies between hospitals in minutes rather than hours.
From a capstone project to a funded venture
The company, Haast Autonomous, founded by graduating seniors Ege Halac, Jason Chen and Santiago Brent, who began the venture as a capstone design project in September 2025. With support from Rice’s Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summer Venture Studio, the team built and tested their prototype at the university’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, producing 13 aircraft iterations in just 16 weeks while keeping each prototype under $1,000.
Named after the Dutch word for haste, Haast pairs a custom aircraft with software that manages dispatch, routing and chain of custody, allowing hospitals to request flights, track shipments in real time and document every step of delivery.
“In our mission to scale autonomous aerial logistics, we have raised $1.85 million and aim to deploy this capital in early 2027 for pilot trials and then move to market later that year,” co-founder Jason Chen said.
The medical cargo drone startup initially targeted transplant organ transport, a goal the founders still hold long term, but they say the underlying platform solves a far bigger problem.
“What we realized is that the platform we are building is suited for medicine, but it really underlies a much larger problem of mission-critical transport across industries,” co-founder Santiago Brent said.
Haast has already won several awards at Rice’s 2026 Oshman Engineering Design Showcase, including Best Aerospace or Transportation Technology, and has partnered with Airspace Link to support autonomous flight coordination. The founders say they have spoken with hundreds of potential customers and secured early letters of intent ahead of pilot trials. The funding signals strong investor confidence in student-led aerial logistics.
