DJI is banned in the United States and nobody is coming to save you. What happens when DJI, the world’s leading maker of drones, is no longer welcome in the United States? You might think other dronemakers would see a huge opportunity with their competitor out of the picture. That didn’t happen. In the 15 months since the United States triggered an automatic ban on future DJI products, no company has rushed to serve the consumers, prosumers, photographers, videographers, farmers, surveyors, and more that use DJI gear. Instead, US dronemakers are largely focused on a more lucrative opportunity: a billion dollars the Pentagon has earmarked for drones that kill.
Drone professionals are scared, says Vic Moss, cofounder of Drone Service Providers Alliance, an advocacy group that represents over 33,000 pilots nationwide. “We don’t have what we need to complete the jobs we do if we don’t have DJI drones,” he tells The Verge.
But nobody is capable of filling DJI’s shoes, experts say. And those who might have tried are being scared off by Trump policy.
Just before Christmas, the FCC banned all future “foreign” drones, not just DJI, from entering the United States. Chinese dronemakers, an estimated 90 percent of the drone market, are out.
Last year, things were looking up for Zero Zero Robotics, one of the few Chinese dronemakers ever to step out of DJI’s shadow in the US. In 2024, my colleague Thomas Ricker gave its HoverAir X1 a glowing review; despite early issues, the company’s upscale X1 Pro and Promax made it into Costco and Best Buy stores. In August 2025, it announced a potential holy-grail product: a self-flying drone that can take off and land on water. It was on my shortlist of companies that might thrive if DJI got hosed.
But in December, after the Trump administration instituted its de facto import ban on all future foreign drones, Zero Zero’s US backers began to worry they might never receive the waterproof drone they paid for. What was expected to be a ban on just two Chinese dronemakers, DJI and Autel, had turned into a ban on every consumer dronemaker outside the US — and Zero Zero hadn’t managed to outrun that ban.
No device with a radio can be imported, sold, or marketed in the US unless the FCC authorizes it first, and that’s exactly what the FCC has stopped doing for foreign-made drones and foreign-made Wi-Fi routers. Devices certified before the ban are allowed, but Zero Zero didn’t clear two unexpected hurdles.
First, the FCC stopped certifying gadgets between October 1st and November 13th because of the US government shutdown. Second was the FCC’s surprise ban on December 22nd. In total, Zero Zero had only two narrow windows of opportunity, roughly 40 days each, after it started taking backers’ money.
Zero Zero has yet to receive FCC approval for the HoverAir Aqua, public records show. In the meanwhile, the company is slowly beginning to offer refunds. Publicly, the company has not admitted that its US-bound Aqua drones are dead in the water, though.
In January, it merely told Indiegogo backers that “the recent addition of foreign-made drones to the FCC’s Covered List has introduced significant regulatory uncertainty” and promised to ship them “as soon as possible.”
In February, it wrote that: “We are actively working through the necessary external processes to enable your shipments.”
As of March, the company was still suggesting that US backers can simply wait for their shipments “as we navigate the regulatory process.” But it also began offering to ship drones to Canada or other locations for pickup outside the US — and it has individually told backers that “if the US ban remains in place, we’re happy to process a full refund for your order.”
Zero Zero third-party spokesperson Jacob Hauge would not tell The Verge what it is actually doing to “navigate the regulatory process” or what percentage of its backers are in the US, suggesting the company does not want to share more info with the public or its competitors.
As far as we’re aware, Chinese companies like Zero Zero only have a few moves: they can sue (like DJI did), they can halt shipments indefinitely, or they can apply for “Conditional Approval” with the FCC — which means submitting a plan to manufacture its drones in the US.
Unlike Zero Zero, a company named Antigravity managed to thread the needle.
On December 3rd, it put the world’s first 360-degree drone on sale at Best Buy, exactly halfway through the window between the government shutdown and the foreign drone ban. The FCC processed its paperwork on November 18th, just five days after it got back to work, and so the Insta360-developed brand has one drone — and only one — it can freely sell in the US.
It’s off to a good start. The