A Palm Sized Drone From Tornyol Wants to Hunt Every Mosquito in Your Yard

The deadliest animal gets a tiny hunter

Mosquitoes kill more than 700,000 people a year through diseases including West Nile, Zika, and malaria, more than any other creature on Earth. Tornyol, a company based in France, is building the most direct answer imaginable: a palm sized drone that finds a mosquito in flight and rams it. The company plans to bring it to the United States market in 2027.

The idea started as napkin math from founder Alex Toussaint, who has called it a stupid idea whose numbers kept working. A 28,000 dollar grant from Manifund, a platform that funds unusual and risky projects, gave it a first push in 2024. Toussaint is now joined by cofounder Clovis Piedallu, and Tornyol went through the Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch, which helped the concept move from sketch to flying hardware.

How a 40 gram drone hears its target

The whole aircraft weighs about 40 grams. Finding a mosquito is the hard part, so the sensing stack does the clever work:

• An ultrasonic phased array sonar, working like car parking sensors, maps the air around the drone
• Microphones of the grade found in phones listen for the distinct wingbeat that separates a mosquito from other flying insects
• Once locked on, the drone simply collides with the target mid air
• One device patrols about five acres, and you set the zone on its charging base with no installation

Real proof, short battery

Tornyol reports a milestone that sounds invented and is not: the first recorded air kill of an insect by a drone, a moth taken down mid flight. The company has raised 500,000 dollars in seed funding backed by Y Combinator and venture firms, and it is taking reservations for a subscription priced at 50 dollars a month.

The limits are just as clear. Flight time is about three minutes per charge, with roughly thirty minutes to recharge, which is a serious constraint for a machine meant to guard five acres. United States regulatory approval is still ahead, the design has to scale from prototypes to a product that ships on time, and plenty of pest control veterans doubt a ramming drone can beat sprays, traps, and habitat work on cost. Tornyol stated goal is to cut the cost of mosquito control by a factor of one hundred, which is the claim the next two years will test.

Why Florida should be watching

Few markets fit this product like Florida. Mosquito season here runs most of the year, and the places that suffer most are the places people pay to be: wedding venues, restaurant patios, resort pools, and outdoor festival grounds. A quiet, chemical free way to clear the air over an event space is not a gadget story for venue owners. It is a guest experience and a booking story.

There is a creator lesson in Tornyol rise as well. The product explains itself in five seconds of video: a tiny drone, a mosquito, a collision. No narration, no spec sheet. If your work is hard to understand, find the five second demonstration that makes it obvious, and lead with that. Tornyol napkin math got funded. Its flying proof is what will get it bought.