St. Louis startup WingXpand, which has developed an expandable drone designed to fit inside a backpack, has moved its headquarters to Ranken Technical College and formed a workforce partnership with the education institution.
WingXpand’s new headquarters is located inside the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center at Ranken’s campus in North City, and includes the startup's manufacturing operations. It was previously located in the T-Rex entrepreneurship center downtown.
Launched in 2022, WingXpand has created a drone it describes as a “plane in a pack,” with a portable design using patented technology that allows its wings to be stored in a backpack and expand to an 8-foot wingspan. It says its drone can fly five times longer than a typical drone and carry more sensors used to collect data. It has also developed software to be used with its drones.
WingXpand announced its new location Monday, and said it has entered into a workforce partnership with Ranken that involves students at the private, nonprofit institution working for the startup. WingXpand co-founder and President Michelle Madaras said students working at WingXpand will receive “hands-on” experience in drone manufacturing, assembly and maintenance. The students will be paid at an hourly rate for their work with the startup.
A couple of Ranken students are currently working for WingXpand, and that figure is expected to climb alongside the company’s growth, Madaras said. Co-founder and CEO James Barbieri said WingXpand doesn’t have a target figure for how many Ranken students it hopes to have work there, but said the partnership includes flexibility to grow its student workforce as needed.
“(Ranken) has been so accommodating with us. I know if I picked up the phone tomorrow and said, ‘Hey I need 10 students in two weeks,' they would make it happen,” he said.
Ranken President Don Pohl said in an interview that 98% of its graduates are placed within their chosen career field within six months of graduation. He said a contributor to that success is partnerships with employers like WingXpand.
“At the end of the day, we know that the best way to train someone to go to work is to use real world work whenever possible,” he said.
Ranken has its main campus in St. Louis and sites in Troy, Wentzville and Perryville. It offers programs in automotive, electrical, construction, information technology and manufacturing. With its partnership with WingXpand, Pohl said Ranken has the ability to work with a company on the “bleeding edge” of technology and introduce students to drone manufacturing.
“This is so futuristic that students really get into this,” he said.
WingXpand has positioned its drone as a tool that can be used by national defense entities and has worked with several branches of the U.S. armed forces. It announced in June it secured a “seven-figure contract” with the U.S. Air Force to provide drone aircraft designed to “withstand more rigorous conditions” and that includes software designed to detect and monitor wildfires. The startup also recently was named a winner of the U.S. Army’s xTechSearch 7 technology competition and has worked with the U.S. Navy on maritime applications of its technology, Barbieri said.
Beyond defense, WingXpand says it has also worked with customers in the fields of agriculture, oil and gas, and public safety.
WingXpand’s new headquarters inside the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center totals about 2,000 square feet in size. That’s about four times larger than the company’s previous footprint inside the downtown T-Rex entrepreneurship center, Madaras said. The startup’s growing footprint comes as it has also expanded its team to include about 20 employees and contractors, a figure that has roughly doubled since the start of 2023. Funding for WingXpand has included about $500,000 in a pre-seed funding round and the company plans to pursue seed funding in the future, Madaras said.
