Merlin, Inc. Common Stock Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 13, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Merlin achieved major program milestones, including completion of the critical design review for its C-130J program and advancement toward integration, ground testing, and flight testing.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company reached SOI 3 certification progress with New Zealand’s aviation regulator and resolved an issue paper covering AI/ML-based natural-language processing for air traffic control communications, reducing regulatory uncertainty.
  • Positive Sentiment: Merlin ended Q2 with $183.9 million in cash and short-term investments and no debt; management believes its resources can fund growth into fiscal 2028. The company expects second-half 2026 revenue of approximately $4 million to $6 million and meaningful C-130J-related revenue in 2027.
  • Negative Sentiment: Despite revenue rising to approximately $2.2 million, adjusted EBITDA was a $27.8 million loss and operating cash flow was negative $27.3 million as Merlin continued investing heavily in engineering, certification, hiring, and program execution; the company provided no 2027 revenue guidance.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Merlin, Inc. Common Stock Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now it's my pleasure to hand the conference to Brian Alger, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Brian Alger
SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Merlin

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Merlin's quarterly earnings call for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Joining me on the call today are Matt George, Merlin's Founder and CEO, and Ryan Carrithers, our CFO. Momentarily, Matt will kick things off with a review of our recent achievements and a brief overview of Merlin and our objectives. He will then spend some time detailing the value proposition of the Merlin Pilot and the market opportunity that we believe it represents. Matt will be referencing a number of industry and market statistics throughout his commentary. Reference sourcing material for these comments can be found in the appendix section of the investor presentation deck intended to accompany today's call. That deck can be found at investors.merlinlabs.com. Ryan will then take you through the financial results, our balance sheet position, and our financial expectations.

Brian Alger
SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Merlin

Finally, Matt will have a few closing remarks before we start the Q&A session. Now, before we begin, a reminder that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from what is expected or implied. Those factors include, among others, regulatory approval timelines, competitive dynamics, capital availability, technology development, and broader market conditions. For a complete discussion of risk factors, please see our most recent filings with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Today's discussion will also reference adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure.

Brian Alger
SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Merlin

A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP measure, is included in the earnings release available on the investors relation section of our website at investors.merlinlabs.com. With that, I'll hand the call over to Matt. Matt?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Thanks, Brian, and thank you all for joining us today for Merlin's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before I hand things over to Ryan to walk you through the financials in detail, I want to spend some time talking to the results we've achieved, where we are as a business, and where we're going. We finished the quarter with $183.9 million in cash equivalents, and short-term investments, and importantly, no debt. As Ryan will detail momentarily, we believe our balance sheet strength is one of our strongest advantages today because it allows us to continue hitting the milestones necessary to capture the opportunity I am about to describe. When we last spoke in May, we laid out a number of ways to measure our progress.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

We talked about key areas of focus in the near term, progress on our C-130J contract, building a go-to-market network for civil cargo, and advancing civil certification of our core AI processes and technology. In Q2, we delivered major milestones in all three categories. Early in the quarter, we announced completion of the critical design review, or CDR, with our lead customer on the C-130J, moving us closer to deployment across the fleet. At Farnborough last month, we announced that Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI, and Merlin signed a non-binding MOU to advance the development, integration, and certification of AI-powered autonomy for commercial cargo aircraft. This expands our partner ecosystem and puts us on the path to serve approximately 2,400 aircraft in the global civil cargo market.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Just last week, we announced the achievement of stage of involvement, or SOI 3, with the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand under a bilateral aviation safety agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States. Civil certification would be the first step towards opening up a global commercial market of more than 20,000 addressable aircraft for Merlin. These are the three areas of measurement with meaningful progress in all three. Double-clicking on each one of those milestones. First, completion of the CDR on the C-130J program. This is a real proof point of the compounding advantages we described last quarter, and it's exactly the kind of milestone we told you to watch for. The program's next milestone will be related to the integration work on the initial C-130J.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Since completing CDR, we've been working with our customer and subcontractors to define the scope and timeline for future integration, ground testing, and flight testing. Next is our collaboration with IAI, one of aviation's largest providers of freight conversions. Merlin and IAI are working together to advance the development, integration, and certification of AI-powered autonomy for commercial cargo aircraft. This will be a phased engagement, including engineering collaboration, joint market exploration, regulatory preparation, and initial platform selection to lay the groundwork for a definitive commercial agreement and a structured path towards civil certification. Together with our previously announced collaboration with World Star Aviation, Merlin is systematically building the go-to-market engine for the adoption of autonomy by the global civil cargo market. Most recently, we announced the completion of SOI 3 with the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration under their bilateral aviation safety framework.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Two critical components of the Merlin Pilot autonomy platform, the flight control computer and the automated communication system software, have been tested and verified against their requirements. To our knowledge, this is a first for large aircraft autonomy. Achieving SOI 3 represents an important certification milestone, demonstrating that our verification processes, testing evidence, traceability, and engineering controls are sufficiently mature to support certification. Separately, Merlin successfully concluded an important certification issue paper with the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand addressing the use of AI and ML-based natural language processing with the Merlin Pilot, enabling voice-based interaction with air traffic control. This additional milestone establishes the regulator's requirement and an agreed path for demonstrating compliance for this novel capability. This reduces a key area of regulatory uncertainty and represents meaningful progress towards the introduction of AI into certified aviation, not only benefiting Merlin, but the industry as a whole.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Each of these milestones tackles an independent challenge across commercial, technology, and certification, and that diversity is what makes them so important. Together, we believe these milestones represent meaningful evidence and progress towards our mission to build a certifiable autonomous core that is capable of safely and reliably flying any aircraft for any use case and monetizing the Merlin Pilot. As we look to the future, I want to underscore the opportunities we see ahead. For the past 100 years, aviation has been built around human pilots. In the United States alone, more than $45 billion is spent each year to keep our pilots flying. We believe the next 100 years of aviation will be built around autonomy, and we currently sit at the inflection point of adoption.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Merlin is building what we believe will be the operating system of record for the next century of aviation, physical AI for the sky. Our commercial traction, the technology progress, and the certification milestones are all steps on that path. On last quarter's earnings call, we talked about the distinction between the Merlin Pilot and our products, like Condor, and I want to make sure the distinction is well understood. The Merlin Pilot is the core, it's the brain. It's the certifiable AI system designed to adapt any airframe and any mission and becomes more capable with each adaptation. Our products are created when we take that core brain and combine it with a specific airframe, mission, and customer. Everything starts with and scales from the same continuously improving core, the Merlin Pilot. Let's talk about what this combination actually delivers to a market need.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

We call it integrated autonomy that combines two things, flight autonomy with mission autonomy. Flight autonomy is what most people think of first. It's the aviate, navigate, communicate capabilities of most flying aircraft today. It means taking off, flying the airplane, communicating with air traffic control, and landing, all without the need for human intervention. Mission autonomy is different, but just as important. It's everything the aircraft needs to do to accomplish the job it was meant to do. The tasking, sensing, and decision-making specific to a cargo run, surveillance mission, or tactical resupply. We are building both. There are companies focusing on one or the other, but we believe our approach, one core brain, the Merlin Pilot, performing integrated autonomy, has the potential to improve and reduce deployment costs with each airframe we adapt to, compared to bespoke one-off systems where capabilities don't compound.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

I also want to be really clear about the landscape we are addressing, what this is, and just as importantly, what it is not. Today, we are targeting larger fixed-wing aircraft. We see opportunity in both crewed and uncrewed aircraft and, importantly, in existing inventory. The airplanes are already flying today. We are building the brain that will fly today's aircraft for decades to come and one that is also capable of flying the fleets of the future. Let's quantify the opportunity. While we plan to generate revenue by adapting and integrating the Merlin Pilot onto airframes, the business model is centered on a recurring revenue license fee for the Merlin Pilot. That license fee is designed to be value-based, depending on the use case, complexity, and needs of our customer.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Let me share some data to help you better understand how we think about the opportunity and the value that the Merlin Pilot represents. Start with what we already have in-hand, our existing program with the U.S. Air Force on the C-130J, starting first with SOCOM. Today, SOCOM has approximately 75 C-130Js in a couple of different variants. This is part of the Air Force's 300-plus C-130Js and at full deployment across all branches of the DOD and allies, there are approximately 570 C-130J aircraft. We believe the C-130J airframe is a multibillion-dollar opportunity just by itself. Now, widen the lens. The broader U.S. defense inventory of fixed-wing aircraft is over 6,750 aircraft. Excluding China and Russia, global civil cargo represents another 2,400 aircraft and global passenger aircraft, over 20,000 more.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Add it all up, and that is an operating base of more than 29,000 aircraft before we even begin talking about future airframes. Over time, we believe autonomy will drive greater and greater value on the aircraft and the missions that are so important to our customers. Today, in just the United States, third-party sources report that more than $45 billion is spent annually on pilotage. The U.S. military spends over $22 billion on its fixed-wing pilots. Today, there are over 6,750 fixed-wing aircraft in our military inventory. Mathematically, this means the U.S. military currently spends about $3.3 million per plane per year on its pilots. On the U.S. civil side, the dollars spent per plane are remarkably similar at approximately $3.2 million per plane per year. With a U.S. commercial fleet of 7,400 planes, that equates to more than $24 billion being spent on U.S. commercial pilots.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

The value of what we are building with the Merlin Pilot is tied to that spend, plus forecasted growth and diversification of the aviation industry against well-documented perennial shortfalls of new pilots being trained and even fewer achieving the flight hours needed to become professional pilots. Put it all together, based on the assumptions and the market data we have described and factoring in future market growth, we estimate an annual TAM for Merlin of several billion dollars per year. That is what we are building towards. Of course, a large TAM doesn't mean much without a credible map to revenue. So let me quickly walk you through how we actually get there, starting with defense. For the Department of Defense, we believe our multi-year head start and the regulatory complexity of this domain provide meaningful competitive advantages.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

We've been putting in the work for five years, going from RFP through CDR. The next steps are relatively straightforward: integration, ground testing, and flight testing. Adoption across airframes isn't a serial process. It is parallel tracks running at the same time. Every branch and every platform we work with builds experience that we believe compresses the time to adoption for the next platform. Two more things worth knowing about the DOD. Their funding subsidizes a meaningful amount of our integration costs, and the DOD controls the pace of adoption and the installation schedule. That's a feature of working with this customer, not a bug. It's part of why the C-130J program has been de-risked the way it has. On the civil side, we have made considerable progress towards certification. We achieved SOI 3 by successfully testing and verifying our flight control computer and the automated communication system against their requirements.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

To our knowledge, Merlin Pilot is the first to reach this important milestone for large aircraft autonomy. With that, I'll hand it over to Ryan to walk through the numbers.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Thank you, Matt. Good afternoon, everyone. As Matt described, our balance sheet continues to provide a strong foundation for Merlin to build what we believe is the operating system of record for the next century of aviation. Our balance sheet has strengthened significantly, and we consider it a strategic advantage. Merlin ended the second quarter with $183.9 million in cash equivalents, and short-term investments with no debt. That's up $60.8 million compared to the first quarter of 2026. We believe these resources position us well to build on our operational progress and pursue the opportunities Matt just outlined. Second quarter revenue was approximately $2.2 million, up $1.2 million from the first quarter of 2026. The substantial majority of that revenue was recognized under our defense IDIQ structure as tapped orders were funded and work was performed.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

On a GAAP basis, net loss for the quarter was approximately $58.4 million, an improvement of $32 million compared to the first quarter of 2026. That improvement was primarily non-cash, driven by changes in the fair value of our warrants and convertible promissory notes, along with several one-time charges related to our business combination in the first quarter. Because the number of items contributing to net loss are financing-related and non-cash, we don't believe they reflect our underlying operating performance. Excluding these and other similar items, second quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $27.8 million, compared to a loss of $23.3 million in the first quarter of 2026. This increase reflects our deliberate investment in engineering, certification, and program execution. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss is included in the earnings release.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Cash flow from operations in the quarter was a negative $27.3 million versus a negative $23.6 million in the first quarter of 2026. Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $1.6 million compared to approximately $2.2 million in the first quarter of this year. Before we move to Q&A, I want to underscore the point of all this. Our balance sheet strength gives us room to invest with discipline, and we intend to direct spending primarily toward advancing Merlin Pilot and accelerating our go-to-market opportunities. As I said last quarter, we believe Merlin's financial runway extends beyond our near-term certification and commercial milestones. More specifically, based on our current operating plan assumptions, we believe our existing resources are sufficient to fund our growth into fiscal 2028.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

In the near term, our revenue will be tied to our progress on the C-130J IDIQ contract with USSOCOM, where we are now advancing into the integration phase, the second of our three revenue phases. We expect this same three-phase model to apply across every airframe and customer we work with, defense and civil alike, as Matt just detailed for the Merlin Pilot. In adaptation, we are paid to adapt Merlin Pilot to a customer's specific airframe and requirements. In integration, we work with a growing network of partners, including World Star Aviation and IAI, to physically integrate our solution onto the aircraft. In licensing, we collect a recurring license fee for the life of the software, which we expect to receive over the remaining operational lifetime of the airframe. What we charge at each phase is driven by complexity and the value we deliver to the customer.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

The key milestones investors should watch for remain progress in our contract with USSOCOM, expansion of our go-to-market partnerships across the defense and civil aviation industry, new engagements on emerging mission sets and programs. With that, I will turn the call back over to Matt for his final thoughts.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Thanks, Ryan. Let me bring this together into several key points I want you to leave the call with today. First, we believe there is a multi-billion dollar total addressable market for Merlin annually. Second, we already have real tangible progress towards that opportunity. Our existing program on SOCOM C-130J provides us with a potential path to the Air Force's total inventory of more than 300 aircraft, not to mention C-130Js operating globally outside of the U.S. Air Force. Third, we have a lead in process and development. Getting from RFP through CDR took us five years, and with parallel tracks for each airframe, that lead compounds with every new program. Fourth, our differentiation is clear. We are focused on the DOD's large existing aircraft with an intent to leverage our work with that customer into additional commercial opportunities.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Fifth, we have demonstrated real success doing this by securing both PDR and CDR on the C-130J. We are excited about the future because we believe we are building the operating system of record for the next century of aviation and believe we have built meaningful early advantages that we expect to compound over time. We are operating with conviction, with capital, with customers, and with a clear plan. Our team has spent eight years getting to this moment, and we believe the opportunity in front of us is significant and important. We appreciate every one of you being on this journey with us. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. Our first question is from Andres Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed.

Andres Sheppard
Andres Sheppard
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. Congratulations on the quarter, and thanks so much for taking our questions. Congratulations on the completion of the CDR. Very exciting. Just wanted to follow up maybe on Ryan's remarks there towards the end, coming back to the C-130J program. I realize you are not guiding revenues here, but just wondering if you could maybe give us a sense or just help us better understand how we should expect that stage or Phase 2 ramp up, and then going into the final phase, just any more granularity you might be able to give us or direction?

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Hey, Andres. Thanks for the question. We are working close with our customer to hopefully be able to announce expansion on that contract. We expect meaningful revenue in 2027 to be coming from the next phase. We do not have anything we can announce today, but, as soon as we do, we will be putting out a release to announce that.

Operator

One moment for our next question. It comes from Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen. Please proceed.

Gautam Khanna
Gautam Khanna
Analyst at TD Cowen

Can you give us some estimation of what second half revenues might be if you hit your milestones?

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Yeah. We're anticipating anywhere between $4 million and $6 million in the second half of this year for revenue.

Gautam Khanna
Gautam Khanna
Analyst at TD Cowen

Right. Do you have a ballpark sense for what 2027 could provide in revenue?

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Not at this moment. We are not providing guidance on 2027 revenue at the moment.

Gautam Khanna
Gautam Khanna
Analyst at TD Cowen

Can you talk a little bit more specifically about some of the other platforms you are working on besides the C-130J and when those milestones might actually be?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Hey, Gautam. This is Matt. That is a great question. One of the things we pride ourselves on at Merlin is ability to go adapt the Merlin Pilot to a bunch of different aircraft and be able to do that very quickly. We started out way back in the day with small canard composite aircraft, which are about 1,000 pounds. Now the largest aircraft we are doing is the C-130J, which is clearly a much larger aircraft. We expect to announce new aircraft here in the short term. Watch this space. It is something that we are really excited about as a team. Nothing we have announced yet, but at the core of what we are building is adaptable different types of aircraft. The other thing that investors should watch for is how we use new types of aircraft to enter new segments of markets that we previously have not addressed.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Just like there are certain types of aircraft for transport or commercial cargo, both markets that we have announced, there are other types of aircraft that open up new types of markets for Merlin that we have not yet announced, but definitely watch this space, leveraging our aircraft adaptability.

Gautam Khanna
Gautam Khanna
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Suji Desilva with Roth Capital. Please proceed.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Hi, Matt. Hi, Ryan, Brian. Congratulations on the progress here. The C-130J, you talked about remaining milestones and steps, and you said something about there being parallel tracks, potentially. I just want to understand what that comment meant and if that has implications on the timing of what's remaining for the C-130J in terms of milestones.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Yeah, that's a great question. So two answers to that that both add into each other. The first is that as we're integrating on the C-130J, the core Merlin brain and the software releases that we're releasing are continuing to get smarter and smarter and smarter. We've talked about this in previous earnings calls, but you can really think about it as like a brain and a body. So while the brain is embodied in different types of aircraft, like the C-130 or the Cessna Caravan or some of the other aircraft that we've flown, the brain continues to get smarter with each and every release. That's track number one. And track number two, which is really actually quite important for the C-130J, is this is the first time we're integrating on a very large aircraft. The C-130J is like almost a Boeing 737-sized airplane.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Yeah.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

The lessons that we are learning of integrating onto a large multi-engine turbine aircraft, those lessons, both technical but also regulatory and safety, allow us to move really quickly on other adjacent aircraft, like the KC-135 and some other aircraft that we have talked about. By taking that brain, putting it in the C-130J, we believe that that will allow us to go accelerate onto other platforms much more quickly. We have seen that feedback from our customer as well, which has been exciting.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Okay, great. My other question is on how the expenses will kind of trend from here, just to understand as you move toward longer-term break even. Also, with C-130J on the military side and then IAI on the commercial side, how much of that effort has synergy or overlap technologically and with people? Or should I think of them as two separate efforts that have to be staffed up independently?

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Yeah. Thanks, Suji. I will answer the expenses one first. First half of the year, our adjusted EBITDA was just over $51 million. As you imagine, we had a lot of non-recurring external expenses, one-time costs that are built in there that we are now through. We are anticipating the second half of the year to be flat to a little bit better than the first half of the year as we have now worked through some of those, and our ramp of hiring is slowing a little bit in the second half. I will turn to Matt for the other question.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Yeah. As we are thinking about IAI and some of the commercial work that we are doing vis-a-vis the C-130J, it goes back to the previous question, which is we are taking that Merlin Pilot brain and putting that Merlin Pilot brain into large, highly certified, complex aircraft. The C-130J is, while used for military applications, is a very large, highly complex airplane, just like some of the stuff that we are considering with IAI. If you look at the refueling and tanker market, where we have talked about some of our work on the KC-135, that is a derivative of a commercial aircraft. It is the same core technology, same core group that is working on how to make the Merlin Pilot applicable to those large transport class aircraft, where clearly there is differences in parts of the mission.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

But at the end of the day, flying those large airplanes is quite similar between the civil and sort of the defense markets, particularly for cargo missions. So that is where we, on the team, are pretty excited about the overlap, and that is why we have been very careful about which opportunities we pick so that we can go after the largest addressable market in the shortest period of time with as much focus and capital efficiency as possible.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Okay, great. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Brian.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Mike Latimore
Mike Latimore
Analyst at Northland Capital Markets

All right. Thanks. Yeah, congrats on hitting the milestones here. I guess, Matt, you mentioned you hope to announce an expansion. By that, do you mean a task order under the IDIQ or an expansion from the 105 number that is attached to IDIQ?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Yeah. Clearly we are not going to get out in front of anything yet that we have not released. As we talked about when we released the CDR news, the reason the CDR news is important, clearly first is that the team passed the milestone. To our knowledge, it is the first time anybody has done something like that on this complex of an aircraft with autonomy. Also, what the CDR does is it clears us from an engineering and technical perspective to begin the process of integrating onto that first aircraft. That is kind of the table stakes for other additional task orders. Clearly, with each one of those stages, we have to go back, work with our customer, work with our subcontractors. It is a bunch of work to begin integration onto a C-130J. So we are working with our entire industrial base, our customers.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Nothing to announce there yet. We have cleared that milestone, so that door is now open, and we are working with all of our stakeholders to start the process to integrate onto that airplane.

Mike Latimore
Mike Latimore
Analyst at Northland Capital Markets

Got it. Then, I guess in the press release, you talk about the next phase is to integrate the system onto an aircraft. So would a logical task order be basically the integration cost or revenue related to integration on one aircraft, or is it broader than that?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

I am not going to get in front of our customer on the specifics of task orders. What I will say is that this is the first time, to our knowledge, autonomy has been integrated onto a large aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

It is going to clearly start with one airplane, then we're going to expand from there. With that said, it is a lot of work, and even that one airplane will be a lot of work, but we're excited about it. It's going to be the first time that autonomy has crossed that valley of death and actually gotten onto a large United States Air Force aircraft, which we're mega excited about.

Mike Latimore
Mike Latimore
Analyst at Northland Capital Markets

Right. I guess you've talked in the past about how much integration revenue you could get per plane. Would this initial one be more than that sort of that longer-term average by a fair amount?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Yeah. The first one, just like we've sort of talked about in previous calls, the initial integration of going from zero to one of the capability for the United States Air Force and United States Special Operations Command, everything is going to be more expensive. There's going to be larger quantums of capital as we adapt the system onto that first aircraft. But we're excited about the future, and always building and integrating towards production.

Mike Latimore
Mike Latimore
Analyst at Northland Capital Markets

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. We have a question from the line of Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed.

Austin Moeller
Austin Moeller
Analyst at Canaccord Genuity

Hi, good afternoon. I was just wondering, once you integrate the Merlin Pilot onto the aircraft as part of the next phase, what mission objectives will need to be accomplished during flight? Will you be flying in different weather conditions, carrying different size payloads, air traffic control conditions? Do you need to fly a certain range? What boxes need to be checked here?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

Yeah, we are not going to get in front of the customer on specifics of the mission of their aircraft. What I can say is we are regularly flying our system out of our test facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, on one of our surrogate aircraft, where the aircraft is taking off, touching down, interacting with air traffic control. The initial set of features will be crawl, walk, run, in that vein of flight autonomy on that airplane. Then we will gradually layer on mission elements on top of that basic capability. That is why it is so important that even while we are integrating on the C-130J, the core Merlin Pilot brain is getting smarter and smarter with more and more features being added, that we will then, when the customer is ready, introduce those features onto the C-130J and into their operating environment.

Austin Moeller
Austin Moeller
Analyst at Canaccord Genuity

Okay. I guess, as far as the revenue opportunity and getting the licensing revenue on Merlin Pilot, do we essentially need to get to the integration stage and through critical design review, and get that certified on type with each aircraft before you can start seeing that recurring licensing revenue?

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

When we're looking at the industry writ large, there's a lot of experimental projects, there's a lot of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency programs, but what is most exciting, at least for us, about what we're doing with the C-130J, is we're working with the end customer on an operational aircraft and an operational airframe. Clearly, we have to go meet the safety requirements and integrate onto that first aircraft. You're totally right, that integration is the first step on the journey to what we believe will be a first of full autonomy entering service on a large United States Air Force aircraft with the revenue profile that we've previously discussed on previous earnings calls.

Ryan Carrithers
CFO at Merlin

Yeah, maybe just to add to that, we've talked about revenue in three ways, which is adaptation of the Merlin Pilot, integration onto the plane, and then the licensing phase being the last pillar.

Austin Moeller
Austin Moeller
Analyst at Canaccord Genuity

Excellent. Thanks for all the details.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you do have a question, simply press star 1 to get in the queue. As I see no further questions in the queue, I will pass the call back to Matt George for final comments.

Matt George
Founder and CEO at Merlin

All right. Thank you, operator. We really appreciate each and every one of you being on this journey. As we've demonstrated today, we're making really meaningful progress towards taking autonomy out of a concept and getting it into the hands of the folks that use it and need it the most, and you're all part of that journey with us. Really appreciate everyone taking the time. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you, and this concludes our conference. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

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