Aviern is building unmanned fixed-wing cargo airplanes that take off, fly a route, and land with nobody on board, for shippers moving freight into small airports and for military resupply where a crewed flight is too costly or too dangerous. The four-person Los Angeles company, in Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch, wants to reach the roughly 5,000 public-use airports in the United States. The company notes that only about 520 of those airports are certified for airline service, so most of the network sees general aviation rather than cargo, even though nearly every American lives within 30 miles of one. In under two months the team designed, built, and flew a scaled composite prototype that taxis, takes off, follows a route, and lands on its own. They are also working on a larger 50-pound aircraft. Their in-house software, AviernOS, has logged more than 150 miles of autonomous flight. The planned A1000 is specified for 1,000 pounds of cargo over 1,000 miles, short takeoffs from unprepared strips, and automotive gasoline or avgas, at a listed operating cost of about $100 an hour. The launch also sets a target of under $1,000 for that trip. Those capacity and cost figures are design targets. Autonomy so far has been shown on the scaled demonstrator. The first production aircraft is planned under 1,320 pounds for the FAA's proposed Part 108 rules, with a fully autonomous flight of a retrofitted small airplane targeted for the first quarter of 2027 and a clean-sheet cargo aircraft for early 2028. Co-founders Kush Agarwal and Arvin Singh both come from UCLA. Agarwal, CEO, taught drone engineering, led the autonomous aerial systems club, previously worked on drone operations at Matter Intelligence, and holds a pilot's license from flying small fields across California. Singh, CTO, taught aircraft engineering, led subteams in UCLA's Design/Build/Fly club, and has spent 10 years designing and building airplanes, including wins in international competitions scored on how much payload a light airframe can carry.