The Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation's (VIPC), Commonwealth Commercialization Fund (CCF) today announced that Advanced Aircraft Company has been awarded a CCF grant of ​$75,000. VIPC's CCF program has distributed more than $43 million to Virginia-based startups, entrepreneurs and university-based inventors since 2012.

Advanced Aircraft Company (AAC), based in Hampton, Va., develops and manufactures distributed electric propulsion tilt-wing and multi-rotor uncrewed aircraft systems for defense applications. This CCF grant will be used to engage with the Department of Defense on the company's products and promote sales to different DOD entities. AAC has previously received funding from VIPC's Virginia Venture Partners, has received SBIR-related assistance from VIPC's Federal Funding Assistance Program, and is an active participant with the Virginia Unmanned Systems Center at VIPC.

“We are thrilled to receive a CCF grant from VIPC,” said Paul Allen, Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Aircraft Company. “This funding will allow us to further develop our next-generation uncrewed aircraft systems for the US Department of Defense to drastically improve our military's operational and logistics support capabilities by maximising performance, efficiency, and endurance.”

“We are pleased to award a CCF grant to Advanced Aircraft” said Sean Mallon, VIPC's VP for Commercialisation. “VIPC's CCF grant program plays an important role in getting funding to Virginia-based pre-seed and seed-stage startups when they need it most. Our goal is to help Virginia companies grow and lead the nation in innovation, opportunity, and job creation, and Advanced Aircraft has products that will meet critical operational and strategic needs of our military.”

CCF accepts applications and awards funding on a rolling basis to Virginia's small businesses and university-based innovators. This competitive grant program seeks to fund high-potential, Virginia-based, for-profit technology companies at the pre-seed stage of commercialisation and provides grants up to $75,000. The grants support early technology and market validation efforts such as customer discovery, market research, business model validation, development of prototypes or a minimum viable product (MVP), customer pilots, intellectual property protection, team development, and more.