Hop Aero

Founder of Hop Aero (YC S26). Previously built porkchop (satellite propulsion startup)

Hop Aero is building Rook, an autonomous rocket designed to fly cargo into contested or austere locations at hypersonic speeds. The vehicle carries roughly 250 kilograms (about 550 pounds) out to around 750 kilometers (450 miles) in about 15 minutes, close enough to reach Taiwan from Okinawa on a single hop. It takes off and lands vertically, so operators can deploy it from unprepared ground without runways or fixed launch infrastructure. The whole system is sized to fit inside a standard 40-foot shipping container, and because Rook runs on storable propellants, the rocket can sit dormant for up to a year and then launch on short notice. The pitch is aimed squarely at the U.S. Department of Defense and allied logistics planners who are rethinking how to move critical supplies inside a Pacific fight where forward bases, ships, and airfields cannot be assumed to survive. The launch is a debut of Rook alongside early technical traction. The team has stood up its own test site at the Oklahoma spaceport in about four months, hot-fired an in-house engine, and completed tether tests of a prototype hopper. Hop Aero also holds a $1.25M SBIR contract with the U.S. Air Force, which anchors the company inside the Pentagon's broader rocket cargo interest and gives the launch immediate defense customer context rather than being purely aspirational. The company is a Y Combinator Summer 2026 batch startup founded in 2024 by Matija Milenovic and Jacob Balaj, and is based in Orange County, California. Milenovic previously founded porkchop, a satellite electric propulsion startup whose hardware flew on SpaceX Transporter-3, and worked on supersonic UAV programs at Destinus. Balaj comes out of hands-on launch and lander integration and test work at SpaceX (Falcon 9 and Heavy), Virgin Orbit, Masten Space Systems, and SpinLaunch, with earlier avionics experience on MV-22 tiltrotors in the U.S. Marine Corps.

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