What Gets Measured Gets Improved
The Data Layer for the Aerial Economy.
A Terminal whitepaper. Terminal provided by the Marble Institute of Technology. October 2026.
The public record held 7 large drones at the end of 2013 and 16,050 on October 10, 2026.
- 2013: 7
- 2014: 25
- 2015: 1,156
- 2016: 3,145
- 2017: 3,428
- 2018: 2,287
- 2019: 1,848
- 2020: 1,916
- 2021: 1,801
- 2022: 2,305
- 2023: 3,830
- 2024: 6,582
- 2025: 11,123
- Oct 10, 2026: 16,050
Large drones in the public record, at year end and on October 10, 2026: 16,050.
The Short Version
What gets measured gets improved.
Baseball measured what wins games, and the game changed. Markets chart every stock, and capital finds what’s working. Measurement is how a system learns.
The Aerial Economy has never been measured as one system. Drones. Air taxis. Delivery fleets. Autonomous trucks. Billions move on renders, press releases and decks. The real record sits in government files that are scattered, overwritten and impossible to chart.
So we built the data layer.
Terminal keeps the public record on the Aerial Economy: nearly every version of the aircraft registry since August 2023. Fleets, permits, reservations, contracts and holdings. Three years deep. Registry files checked byte for byte against independent archives wherever two copies exist. Of the 814 registry publications we hold, 723 come from a public third-party archive and 91 are our own capture. Registry numbers checked blind.
What it shows:
- Zipline went from zero aircraft on August 16, 2023 to 3,010 on October 10, 2026. No press release counted them. The registry did.
- Large drones are 47.0% of the registry’s net growth from August 16, 2023 through October 10, 2026. Since March 19, 2026, 67.0%.
- From August 16, 2023 through October 10, 2026, 3,517 registrant names appeared with a first large drone.
- Capital and fleets tell different stories. By the capital ledger of October 11, 2026 and the registry of October 10, 2026, Zipline has raised about $0.5 million for each registered aircraft. Archer has raised at least $764 million for each. Zipline’s figures are press-reported.
Better data moves capital to the builders. Capital builds better networks. Better networks move people and goods faster, cleaner and cheaper.
That’s the mission. This paper is the proof.
Why it compounds.
Linear growth adds the same each turn. Reflexive growth adds to the next turn, so it starts slow and then climbs steeply. Illustrative, not a forecast.
Keep it turning. That’s how you get flying cars.
Perception moves capital. Capital builds fleets. Fleets land in the record. The record moves perception.
Illustrative. Not a forecast.
- Measure the recordWe keep nearly every version of the aircraft registry since August 2023. Fleets, permits, contracts and holdings, each with a date.
- See the trendHistory turns a snapshot into a slope.
- Allocate with convictionCapital follows what it can see. Now it can see the record.
- Build and scale the networkCapital becomes aircraft, ports, corridors and chargers.
- The record growsEvery new fleet lands in the public record. The next turn starts richer.
- Quantitative lens: dated and verified.
- Behavioral lens: capital follows what it can see.
1. What Gets Measured Gets Improved
Every system that got better was measured first.
Baseball kept box scores for a century. Then Bill James asked what actually wins games, and the Oakland A’s built a roster on the answer. The league followed. The rules didn’t change. What the game could see did.
Markets work the same way. Every stock has decades of price history, chartable in seconds. You see the trend, test the idea, size the bet. Capital flows to what’s working because “working” is visible.
Now look up.
The sky is unmeasured. The record exists. The FAA keeps a public registry of aircraft, large drones among them. States permit autonomous vehicles. Agencies award contracts. Funds report holdings. But every record lives in a different office, in a different format. Much of it is overwritten as it updates. The FAA publishes its aircraft registry five days a week, and each new file replaces the last. The file before is gone.
You can’t chart what disappears. You can’t backtest what was overwritten. You can’t improve what you can’t see.
Two lenses.
Quantitative. Data is worth something to an investor only if it answers one question: what did we know, and when did we know it? That’s point-in-time data. Without it, there’s no trend and no backtest. Just today’s snapshot.
Behavioral. People decide on what’s in front of them. In the Aerial Economy, that’s the render, the headline and the deck. Akerlof showed how a market breaks when buyers can’t tell quality from claims. Shiller showed how stories move capital. Soros named the loop: perception moves capital, capital changes the fundamentals, the fundamentals change perception. Reflexivity.
When the story is the only thing anyone can measure, capital follows the story.
Measure the record, and capital can follow the record.
That’s the shift. Not louder stories. A shared, dated, verifiable record anyone allocating capital can read.
2. The Cost of Not Measuring
In August 2023, Zipline had zero aircraft in the FAA’s public registry.
Its first aircraft appeared on December 21, 2023.
End of 2024: 174. End of 2025: 931. October 10, 2026: 3,010.
Zero to 3,010 in three years. 2,079 of them first appeared in 2026. 663 in June alone.
No press release counted them. No earnings call. Zipline is private.
In January 2026, a funding round valued Zipline at a reported $7.6 billion. In September 2026, Bloomberg reported talks near $20 billion. You could have read the headlines.
Or you could have read the registry.
The registry had the count. Then it overwrote itself.
We hold it.
Zipline, three years in the sky
From 0 registered aircraft on August 16, 2023 to 3,010 on October 10, 2026; 2,079 of them first appear in 2026, 663 in June alone.
3,010Zipline, total registeredOctober 10, 2026
Aircraft first seen in the month
Source: FAA Civil Aircraft Registry (Releasable Aircraft Database).
Notes
Before March 19, 2026, and on 55 later dates: a public third-party archive of FAA files. In all 91 publications held by both it and our own capture, the main aircraft file is byte-identical.Total registered: valid registrations on Zipline’s approved name and address lines. An aircraft is first seen in the month of the first FAA file that shows it on a Zipline line. A registration date is when the FAA record appears, not when the aircraft was built.History: 814 of 824 FAA registry publications from August 16, 2023 through October 10, 2026. Year-end registry files back to 2010. Our own capture since March 19, 2026.Terminal provided by the Marble Institute of Technology
Keep reading.
The rest of the paper: the data layer, three years measured, the scoreboard, Whale Watch and what we measure next.
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Data and research only. Not investment advice. Figures as of the dates shown.