Toronto drone manufacturer ZenaTech is expanding its footprint in the United States (US) in response to recent “transformative” policy directives out of the White House and Department of Defense, and the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ signed into law by President Donald Trump earlier this month.
The expansion will see ZenaTech triple the square footage of its facilities in Phoenix, Ariz. to enable fully US-based drone manufacturing, assembly, and testing. The company plans to grow its team in the area from seven employees to as many as 30 over the next six to 12 months. The site complements ZenaTech’s existing operational manufacturing facility in the United Arab Emirates.
ZenaTech’s stock price has jumped nearly 40 percent since Hegseth released his pro-drone memo.
ZenaTech, which also advertises its drones for use in land surveying and precision agriculture, said the expansion comes “earlier than expected” as recent US policy has made it “dramatically easier and faster” for American drone companies to sell directly to the military, scale production, and avoid defense procurement bottlenecks.
“Together, they signal a clear national priority: build drones in America, field them fast, and outpace adversaries,” the company said in its statement.
One such bottleneck was eliminated in a memo by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last week, which delegates authority to procure and operate drones to frontline commanders rather than procurement offices. The aim is to equip military squads with low-cost, expendable drones, ZenaTech claims.
As part of this effort, officials eliminated the need for companies like ZenaTech to secure a Green or Blue UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) certification for their drones, a long process that validates corporate cyber hygiene, product security, supply chain risk management, and remote operations security.
“These recent actions represent a historic turning point that gives us the confidence to start substantial facility expansion now,” ZenaTech CEO Shaun Passley said in a statement. “By cutting red tape, opening funding channels, and fast-tracking field deployment for drones, they’ve created an unprecedented opportunity for us to sell directly to the US military at speed and scale.”
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At its new facility, ZenaTech will produce the ZenaDrone 1000, the IQ Square, and the IQ Nano from its portfolio of defence and commercial drone offerings. The Square and Nano drones are small, with the Square a bit larger than one square foot and the Nano slightly smaller, and are intended for inventory inspections and reconnaissance.
The ZenaDrone 1000 is a medium-sized (about 12 feet long) drone built for reconnaissance and field cargo delivery. ZenaTech is working on a gas-powered version to facilitate longer flight times in applications like border patrol.
ZenaTech signalled it wanted its tech to assist with the Trump Administration’s agenda of immigration surveillance back in February by patrolling the coast of Florida for unsanctioned boats.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a federal statute passed by the US Congress and signed into law by the president on July 4, set aside $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security efforts, making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) better-funded than most militaries in the world (including Canada’s, which has a budget of about $63 billion CAD this year). The US Department of Homeland Security reportedly flew two Predator surveillance drones above anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles last month.
ZenaTech listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in October 2024 under the symbol ZENA. The company’s stock price has jumped nearly 40 percent since Hegseth released his pro-drone memo last Friday.
Defence tech has become an alluring vertical in the tech ecosystem since Trump took office earlier this year, as startups in the space see room to take business away from traditional contractors under the administration. The phenomenon showed itself in Canada when Kensington Capital Partners acquired the venture capital business of Ottawa-based One9 to establish its own defence tech VC platform. The tailwinds for the sector continued earlier this month when NATO nations agreed to spend at least five percent of their GDP on defense by 2035.
Feature image courtesy ZenaTech via YouTube.