Zulu Pods

11/09/2026

Please join us in welcoming Mark Richa to Zulu Pods, Inc as our new Materials Engineering Intern!

Mark is a student at the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. He'll be working with our engineering team on the materials side of our work, where the choice of materials affects how our systems perform in tough aerospace and defense environments.

Interns at Zulu Pods do real engineering work from day one, and we're excited to have Mark's curiosity and fresh ideas on the team.

Welcome aboard, Mark! We're glad to have you.

10/19/2026

Success with our core product is opening the door to what’s next.

As customers see what Zulu Pods can deliver, they’re asking us to develop additional components for expendable and attritable platforms.

That growing demand reflects more than an expanding product lineup. It demonstrates the value we bring: reducing risk and helping customers move faster through platform development and qualification.

We’re building on that trust, applying the same approach to more of the challenges our customers need solved.

Rob talked about this with Dan Magy on the Drone Wars Podcast; watch the clip for a look at where we’re headed.

10/16/2026

This week our CEO Rob Sladen took the stage at Venture Atlanta Conference 2026 to talk about a problem most people never see.

Demand for affordable mass propulsion is growing fast. America needs more systems, at lower cost, replenished faster. But the supply base beneath the engine makers, the tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers that build the critical subsystems, isn't ready for that scale. As a16z's American Dynamism team put it, it's "the layer technology hasn't touched."

That's the layer Zulu Pods is building.

Our ZPOD oil subsystem is purpose-built for one-time-use engines: lighter, simpler, modular, and designed to improve engine performance. It's one ZPOD per engine. From there we're building a family of affordable mass fluid systems: oil systems, fluid controls, fuel pumps and ignition.

The work is already moving. ZPOD has completed certification with one customer and is 60% of the way through with three more.

Mission success, fleet readiness and supply chain speed all depend on getting this layer right. We're proud to be building it here.

Thank you, Venture Atlanta, for the stage. 🚀

10/14/2026

Big day for Zulu Pods at Venture Atlanta! 🚀

Our CEO Rob Sladen took the stage today to pitch Zulu Pods to a room full of investors, founders and partners. He told the story of how we help affordable-mass engines get into production faster, starting with ZPOD.

The defense world is shifting toward low-cost, attritable systems built in real quantities. The engines that power them need components that are affordable, reliable and ready for production now. That's the problem our team is solving, backed by in-house testing on real jet engines.

Rob and Daniella Sladen are still at the event, so if you're at Venture Atlanta, come find them and say hi! They'd love to talk about affordable mass, defense manufacturing, or what's next for Zulu Pods. 👋

Huge thanks to the Venture Atlanta team for having us.

10/13/2026

We're proud to announce that Zulu Pods, Inc. has been named an honoree of the 16th Annual GrowFL Florida Companies to Watch Awards, a statewide program recognizing outstanding second-stage companies that demonstrate growth, innovation, leadership and economic impact across Florida.

As defense shifts toward affordable mass, expendable and attritable platforms need engines that can be built fast, at scale and at a cost that makes sense to field in large numbers. The legacy supply chain wasn't built to support that, but we are. ZPOD, which replaces legacy engine lubrication in small turbine engines, is our first product built to close that gap, and it's now in initial production with aerospace and defense customers.

This recognition belongs to our team and to the customers, partners and investors who believe in what we're building. Thank you, GrowFL and congratulations to this year's class of honorees. A special thank you to Ken Hall of DeepWork Capital for nominating us and supporting us through the process. The 16th Annual GrowFL Florida Companies to Watch Awards are presented by title sponsors Nperspective CFO & Strategic Services and Holland & Knight.

10/09/2026

The best engine in the world is only as good as the part nobody thought about.

Rob was asked on the Drone Wars Podcast why legacy manufacturers never solved the lubrication problem the way we did. His answer applies to a lot more than oil.

When you design a jet engine, all the talent goes to the combustor, the compressor, the aerodynamics. Those are the parts that win awards. The igniter, the fuel pump, the fuel valve, the oil system, the sensors get specified, sourced, and checked off. They work. They meet the requirement.

But the companies making them serve every kind of engine, from business jets to power generation. Expendable is one line on a long list. Most of them don't run engines. Nobody at the table is waking up every morning thinking only about a part that flies once, costs what it has to, and ships in the tens of thousands.

That's the gap, and it's a gap of focus, not capability.

Here's what we bring to it. We run engines, so we can qualify a component fast, on real hardware. We design for one flight, not a thousand hours of maintenance. And we work on the parts that tend to be an afterthought.

Zulu Pods started with the one everyone else skipped. Turns out there's a whole list.

Watch the clip.

10/07/2026

The next generation of defense systems needs a next generation of suppliers.

This a16z piece makes the case well: America's defense-tech ambitions depend on the suppliers, engineering expertise, and manufacturing capacity behind the platforms, and on systems companies bringing those suppliers in early, so performance, manufacturability, qualification, and cost get solved together instead of downstream.

That's the opportunity we're pursuing at Zulu Pods: deep fluid-systems expertise applied to the decisions that turn promising designs into mission-ready hardware.

Stronger suppliers. Better systems. A more resilient American industrial base.

The Case for the American Manufacturing Asset Class:

Rebuilding the industrial base required for deterrence is one of the defining investment opportunities of the next decade.

09/28/2026

Zulu Pods has successfully completed altitude testing of our patented ZPOD lubrication technology at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

A significant milestone for ZPOD, these results advance our path toward FY27 Low Rate Initial Production and support the propulsion needs of affordable mass.

ZPOD’s dedicated oil delivery lets missiles and drones use fuel for propulsion that would otherwise be diverted to lubrication, enabling greater range, increased payload, or lower system weight.

Proud of our engineering team and grateful to our government and industry partners!

Read the full release: https://www.zulupods.com/zulu-pods-conducts-successful-altitude-testing-at-air-force-research-laboratory/

/PRNewswire/ -- Zulu Pods, Inc. (ZPI), a leader in advanced fluid delivery systems for expendable and attritable platforms, today announced the successful...

09/24/2026

The Zulu Pods team was honored to be recognized at the South Florida GrowFL Florida Companies to Watch Finalist Recognition Event! 🎉

Standing alongside South Florida's most dynamic second-stage companies was a proud moment for our team. This recognition belongs to the engineers, machinists, and teammates who design and build mission-critical fluid delivery systems for the next generation of defense platforms, reducing technical and production risk for our customers to get affordable mass mu*****ns to the warfighter faster.

Thank you to GrowFL for bringing the community together, to Weedoo Greenboat and Tara Lordi and her team for hosting, and to Tara Lordi and Jane Stolper for their insights during the panel discussion moderated by Bill West.

Congratulations to all of our fellow finalists. We look forward to the CEO Summit and Awards Gala, February 24–26, 2027, at Hard Rock Live in Orlando. 🚀

09/17/2026

Zulu Pods is officially part of the 2026 MassChallenge Security & Resiliency Traction cohort, the #2-ranked accelerator in the U.S. and #1 in Massachusetts according to TIME and Statista.

Last week, Zulu Pods' Alex Jez and Rylie Costello kicked things off in Boston, bringing the engineering and customer-facing sides of our business into the same room, which is exactly what this program is built for.

A genuine thank you to the MassChallenge team who made the onsite worth the trip: Cait Brumme, Will Magruder, Chris Bauer, Mate Berke and Kelly Becker. You built a room where hard technical questions were welcome, and that is rarer than it should be.

And to our mentors Patricia Kampmann, Joanna Peters and Brady Treanor, thank you for the candor. The most useful feedback we got was the kind that made us rethink how we explain ourselves, not just what we are building.