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IR Blog | Business Development & Market Expansion

Last week Merlin announced an exclusive teaming agreement with Remah International Group (RIG), a privately held, UAE-headquartered company focused on military and commercial aviation products and services with more than three decades of regional operating history.¹

The agreement establishes RIG and Merlin as exclusive partners for the commercialization of autonomous flight systems in the UAE, by collaborating to identify opportunities and support customer engagement on suitable use cases and aircraft platforms for Merlin's AI-powered autonomy stack.

The announcement is worth examining beyond the headline. It is one of Merlin’s first publicly disclosed international partnership announcements as a public company, and it points toward something the company has identified since before its listing: that the market opportunity for certified, repeatable autonomy is not bounded by geography, service branch, or aircraft type. It is as large as aviation itself.

One system, any aircraft

Our description of the RIG collaboration - identifying opportunities for 'suitable use cases and aircraft platforms' - is deliberate language. Merlin does not intend to offer platform-specific solutions requiring complete re-engineering for each new aircraft type, rather the Merlin Pilot is being architected to operate across a range of large and complex aircraft, as RIG's Damian Killeen, Advisor to the Chairman, noted in the announcement.

We believe that our unique architecture is what makes an international teaming agreement viable. Merlin can provide an advantage to a partner like RIG since we do not need to build a bespoke system for each operator or mission profile we support. Our architecture only requires a platform that can be evaluated, adapted, and sustained across the aircraft already in regional service.

We believe this is the practical expression of the platform thesis. We believe that revenue at scale, across multiple programs and geographies, requires a system designed for breadth from the beginning - not one that accumulates integration debt with every new customer.

International demand for American aerospace leadership

The RIG partnership is one of Merlin's first public-facing disclosures that we believe indicates that the demand for what we are building extends beyond our domestic customer base.

Merlin has disclosed over $100 million in awarded U.S. defense contracts. The RIG agreement provides an opportunity for Merlin to expand its international presence in a new jurisdiction.

Why this moment

We believe the question for operators is no longer whether to pursue autonomous aviation capabilities, but a more substantive set of questions of which systems are certified, which partners are credible, and which platforms are ready to deploy.

Merlin's position at this moment is the product of years of technical development, program execution, and certification progress that predates the current geopolitical environment. We have built, and are improving in real time, an autonomy stack that’s both unbound by legacy technology and investment and designed specifically for flexible future use.

The OS for the sky is not just a metaphor. It is a description of what Merlin has spent years building: a software intelligence layer that sits above the hardware, works across aircraft types, and deepens in value with every mission flown. The RIG agreement is one more piece of evidence that the timing for that infrastructure is now.

The full announcement is available at investors.merlinlabs.com.

References

1  Merlin, Inc. press release: "Merlin and Remah International Group Announce Exclusive Teaming Agreement to Scope Autonomy Opportunities in the UAE," April 2026.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This Blog contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the potential for Merlin's relationship with Remah International Group to generate commercial opportunities in the UAE; the applicability of Merlin's autonomous flight systems across aircraft types, operators, and geographies; and expectations regarding demand for autonomous aviation capabilities and the market opportunity for Merlin's technology platform. These forward-looking statements are based  primarily on Merlin’s or its management’s current expectations and projections about future events and trends, and are neither promises nor guarantees. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, or other factors that may cause actual future results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements, including Merlin's 424(b)(3) Prospectus dated April 21, 2026, which are available on our investor relations website at https://investors.merlinlabs.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Except as required by applicable law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

Investor inquiries: investors@merlinlabs.com