Pilotless planes for the hardest-to-reach places

When Jeremy Wang (PhD ’23) began thinking about the future of aviation, he wasn’t focused on crowded airports or commercial airlines. Instead, the Waterloo alum was thinking about the places planes rarely reach: remote Northern communities, isolated regions and areas where infrastructure is limited or unreliable. 

“Our mission has always been to make transportation more accessible to the world’s hardest to reach places,” says Wang, co-founder and COO of Ribbit. “Whether they’re hard to reach because of distance, or increasingly, because of national security concerns.” 

Founded in Waterloo, Ribbit is developing pilotless, fixed-wing aircraft designed for what's known as “dual-use” applications — operating across both defence and civilian contexts. The overlap, Wang explains, is more significant than it might first appear.

“Northern Canada is an area of significant strategic interest for sovereignty, but also an area that has significant supply chain needs and challenges,” he says. “Designing for that operating environment shares commonality between those worlds.” 

That shared challenge — how to move people, goods and information reliably in remote, infrastructure-limited regions — is at the core of Ribbit’s approach. By focusing on autonomous flight, the company aims to expand transportation access while supporting everything from military operations to food and medical delivery.

Wang’s path to co-founding the company was shaped by his time at the University of Waterloo, where he found both technical training and entrepreneurial support through Velocity — Waterloo’s flagship startup incubator. “We had a lot of excellent support, mentorship and connections through several generations of entrepreneurs at Waterloo that enabled us to get started,” he says.

While his PhD research in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering wasn't directly tied to aviation, Wang credits the experience with sharpening his ability to think critically and identify gaps. “There's a lot of hype in autonomous systems,” he says, “but what sets Ribbit apart is our ability to stay grounded and focus on executing really well.”

That execution has led Ribbit to focus on fixed-wing aircraft, rather than the more common drone or helicopter-style systems. The difference is critical in remote environments. 

“Airplanes have excellent range, but you need a place to take off and land,” he explains. In regions like Northern Canada, where many communities already have gravel or dirt runways, that makes fixed-wing aircraft a practical solution. 

Ribbit’s systems are designed to operate independently of traditional airport infrastructure, with onboard sensing replacing external navigation systems. The company also focuses on smaller aircraft, where removing the pilot creates significant efficiency gains. 

“Those two seats that the pilot and co-pilot occupy can represent as much as a third of the cargo capacity on a small plane,” Wang says. “If you’re able to free up that space, you’re effectively getting a bigger plane without actually having to operate a bigger plane.” 

Since being featured on Waterloo News in 2023, Ribbit has moved from early prototypes to real-world deployment, securing multiple contracts with Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada, Transport Canada, the Department of National Defence and the National Research Council of Canada.

What began as two founders “pooling some of our savings, buying our first plane” has grown into a company delivering on multiple federal contracts and building repeat relationships with government partners. “We’ve had repeat sales with the same agencies, continuing to build on the existing work we’ve done,” Wang says. 

Ribbit is currently the only Canadian company focused on autonomous fixed-wing flight at this level, positioning it as a strategic partner in Canada's evolving role in uncrewed and autonomous systems, aligned with Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy made earlier this year.

Looking ahead, Wang sees significant opportunity not only domestically but globally. “Canada has a very strong set of technical expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems,” he says. “It starts here as the first phase of a global vision.”

From its roots in Waterloo’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to its growing defence partnerships, Ribbit reflects a new model of Canadian innovation — one where dual-use technologies are built not just for efficiency or performance, but for access, resilience and broader societal impact.