Quantum Cyber Completes Installation of 80 3D Printers at Connecticut Drone Farm

Earlier this year, Mainz Biomed, a Netherlands-incorporated company headquartered in Germany that trades on the NASDAQ, changed its name to Quantum Cyber and shifted its business focus from stool-based colorectal cancer screening kits to 3D printed drones. Scoff if you’d like, but this is actually a pretty conventional business pivot in 2026.

As for Mainz Biomed, the company apparently wasn’t involved in AM; the pivot was the result of the company’s takeover by microcap activist investor David Lazar. In May, after Lazar took over the company, Quantum Cyber secured a license from Miami-based BP United to use the latter’s IP to start building drone production capacity. Now, Quantum Cyber has followed through on its promise to equip a 50,000-square-foot facility in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with 80 3D printers.

Quantum Cyber is planning to make UAVs of all kinds at the site, from attritable one-way attack drones to long-range systems (those are in the concept phase). However, in line with what the US military currently needs most urgently, Quantum Cyber may end up focusing on interceptors first, as signaled by the company’s announcement at the end of July that it had produced its first mini-interceptor drone at its Bridgeport location.

Quantum Cyber also announced a production target of 100,000 drones per year, although it’s not clear when it aims to meet that deadline. That number is roughly the same as the Pentagon’s estimate in its assessment of what all US drone manufacturing capacity is currently capable of turning out per year.

Quantum Cyber also frames the Bridgeport site as an “autonomous drone manufacturing line”, which I assume means that it is planning for full automation. While these are, of course, very outlandish claims for any company, let alone one that was still in a completely different sector less than six months ago, Quantum Cyber is nonetheless providing everyone with tangible benchmarks against which it can be judged.

And, as I said, this is par for the course in 2026. If you didn’t scoff before, surely you will now when I point out that, at the time Quantum Cyber was still Mainz Biomed, few would’ve suspected that SpaceX was about to declare it would be operating more or less as an AI company. (In that vein, it’s not immaterial that Quantum Cyber announced an equity stake in SpaceX back in June.)

You may still be under the thrall of Musk Magic and think the two situations are completely different, but the main difference is simply the scale each company is targeting. Along those lines, whereas no other company is claiming anything remotely close to what SpaceX is claiming it will soon be capable of, other US drone startups, at least, have announced targets similar to those Quantum Cyber is aiming for.

Clearly, it is all an industrial-policy play — much of Quantum Cyber’s website consists of an infographic touting the Trump administration’s “drone dominance” goals — but again, so is SpaceX. To point out yet another pertinent fact, back in February, SpaceX entered “a Pentagon drone competition,” and as soon as the company went public, I privately commented to multiple people that it was inconceivable to me that SpaceX wouldn’t eventually become a drone company. Maybe that’s not all it will ever do, but I would be shocked if that’s not a core pillar soon enough.

Anywhoozles, if you want to disparage a defense startup these days, you’re going to have to do better than, “It was a biotech company until like six months ago!” Palmer Luckey got his start helping Facebook at the inception of its much-maligned pivot to the metaverse. Everyone has a story.

Image courtesy of the City of Bridgeport via Facebook