5 Reasons American Drones Are Taking OffNASDAQ:RNTZ

The FAA sees big drones taking off. Its forecast has drones over 55 pounds climbing from 8,295 in 2025 to 55,509 by 2030. That counts big drones of every kind, not just farm drones.

Farms show how fast it can happen. The American Spray Drone Coalition, an industry group, keeps count of spraying by drone. The original Rantizo company was one of its founders.

By the group’s estimate, drones sprayed 3.7 million U.S. acres in 2023. That rose to 10.3 million in 2024, then 16.4 million in 2025. That is more than four times as many acres in two years.

Hiring a drone got cheaper, too. The group says the average price fell from $21 an acre to $13 in 2025.

Here is the size of the opening. The FAA says China’s exports of big drones to the U.S. fell by three-quarters in 2025, from 3,765 to 894.

On farms, the gap is plain to see. About 9 in 10 new spray drones registered in the U.S. in 2025 were made in China, the coalition’s study of FAA records found. New spray-drone sales fell by more than half that year, it estimates. It blames short supply, not weak demand, after imports from DJI dropped.

U.S.-made drones gained ground. Their share of new sales rose from 6.5 percent in 2024 to 24.3 percent in 2025. The group says that jump mostly filled the gap DJI left.

Does spraying by drone pay? Beck’s Hybrids, a seed company, put it to the test. In 2025 it sprayed fungicide on corn three ways, at trial farms in Indiana, central Illinois and Ohio.

The drone paid best. Fungicide by drone returned $13.17 an acre. A ground rig returned $8.44, and an airplane $3.13.

In a separate three-year study, Beck’s found a similar return for each method. Drones still came out on top, at $16.53 an acre against $14.10 for ground rigs.

Meanwhile, costs are climbing. The USDA expects farms to spend 28.8 percent more on fuel and oil in 2026.

These are Beck’s numbers, not Rantizo’s. But growers can call Rantizo about a field team for one job or a whole season.

The Rantizo name broke ground early. In 2019 the original Iowa City company became the first in Iowa allowed by law to spray crops by drone. In 2020 it won FAA approval to fly three-drone spray swarms across the lower 48 states. The company said it was the first, as far as it knew. Leaps by Bayer led its $7.5 million funding round that December.

In August 2025, the spray business and the name passed to new owners.

This year SKK Holdings, a company already listed on Nasdaq, bought the drone assets of Rantizo, Inc., based in Houston. The deal closed Oct. 9. It was valued at about $258.8 million, paid mostly in 51,966,591 new shares. SKK then took the Rantizo name. On Oct. 13 its shares began trading as RNTZ. At the Oct. 20 close of $4.69, they were worth about $292 million.

Its president, Marianne McInerney, once served at the U.S. Department of Transportation as assistant to the secretary and director of public affairs.

And none of the five big drone stocks on this paper’s tape sells farm spray drones. Smaller listed companies, among them Draganfly and ZenaTech, do market spray drones.