A drone just cut down a tree, stripped its branches, and carried it out of a forest — on its own

A Swedish startup has pulled off what it claims is a genuine world first: a drone that autonomously felled a tree, stripped its branches mid-flight, and carried the log out of a standing forest — no ground crew, no heavy machinery. AirForestry's system completed the full harvest cycle in a working production forest, not a controlled test site. The company says the approach eliminates the roughly 20% of forest floor damage caused by conventional 20-tonne harvesters.

The machine

The drone spans 6.2 metres, weighs considerably less than a traditional harvester, and lifts payloads up to 200 kg — enough to handle the 40–140 kg trees typical of thinning operations. It grabs a tree from above, strips branches on the way down, saws the trunk near the ground, then flies the log to a roadside collection point. It runs on electric power, produces zero on-site emissions, and operates in temperatures down to -20°C, through rain and snow, and in winds up to 13 m/s.

The intended deployment is a fleet of six drones per site. Dronewatch Europe reports the system costs around €450,000 — comparable to a conventional harvester — but AirForestry claims the fleet yields 8% more timber over a full harvest cycle by preserving soil structure.

The pitch vs. the proof

Traditional harvesters cost roughly $81 per machine-hour to run; forwarders add another $53. Beyond operating costs, their weight compacts soil and damages root systems, reducing forest productivity for decades. Even lighter alternatives like the Malwa 560 weigh 5.5 tonnes and still leave tracks. AirForestry argues that removing ground machinery entirely breaks that cycle.

The company raised a €10.3M seed round in October 2024, led by Northzone — the VC behind Spotify and Klarna — with Europe's largest forest owner Sveaskog and the Swedish Energy Agency (which contributed a €1.7M grant) among the backers, per Silicon Canals.

January 2026 brought a Norway trial with state-owned Statskog, which manages one-fifth of Norwegian forests. The terrain near Trondheim is steeper and more rugged than Sweden's flatter forests where the system was developed — a meaningful test of real-world versatility. Results from that trial have not yet been published, according to the AirForestry–Statskog partnership announcement.

What's still open

The global thinning market is worth an estimated €14 billion annually, and US forestry is dominated by established equipment makers like Komatsu and John Deere. AirForestry's regulatory pathway outside Sweden remains unclear — EU airspace rules, UK post-Brexit drone approvals, and US FAA remote-operation permits each follow different frameworks. No commercial launch date, pricing model, or availability outside Scandinavia has been announced. The 8% yield improvement and a claimed 23 million tonnes of CO₂ preservation for Swedish forests alone originate from AirForestry's own marketing; independent forestry research has yet to validate them.