The Drone Wire
DroneDeploy Raises $25M to Bring Drones to Every Job Site
DroneDeploy today announced that they have raised $25 million in series C funding. DroneDeploy is the largest cloud-based drone data platform with a community of 30,000 users having mapped 30 million acres in 180 countries on 400,000 job sites. The round is led by the Invenergy Future Fund, a venture capital firm focused on making technology investments into early-stage companies that make energy and industrial operations more affordable, reliable, and secure. The round is also backed by AirTree, one of the largest venture capital firms in Australia, as well as existing investors, Scale Venture Partners, Uncork Capital, Emergence Capital and AngelPad. The Series C funding round brings the total amount of equity investment raised by DroneDeploy to over $56M.
“The consistent theme we heard from customers is that DroneDeploy’s product and accompanying applications help achieve significant ROI and reduce risk on the job site. We are excited about the early and growing market leadership the company has established in power and energy industries.”
“We started DroneDeploy to make drones accessible tools to everyone, and we’ve since become the world’s largest commercial drone software platform by providing drone software that’s both easy to use, and powerful,” said Mike Winn, CEO and co-founder of DroneDeploy. “With this new funding round, we have the opportunity to work with more customers who will bring our platform to new industries, and transform workflows on every job site.”
DroneDeploy plans to use the funds to extend its position as the market leader by expanding their ecosystem of over 80 platform apps and integrations, and accelerating a series of industry-focused solutions. With increasing adoption in the Energy, Construction, and Agriculture industries, DroneDeploy plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence to build new workflows that solve some of the toughest challenges facing companies today.
“Our investment process into this market was customer-led,” says John Tough, a Partner at the Invenergy Future Fund. “The consistent theme we heard from customers is that DroneDeploy’s product and accompanying applications help achieve significant ROI and reduce risk on the job site. We are excited about the early and growing market leadership the company has established in power and energy industries.”
DroneDeploy has seen unparalleled growth in 2018 through the continued release of new features and developing strategic partnerships with SoftBank, Accenture, and The Climate Corporation. Most recently, they launched the industry’s only real-time mapping solution, Live Map, which stitches RGB and thermal imagery on the edge using iOS devices—providing instant insights on the job site. Their newly released enterprise cloud capabilities provide the management and security tools necessary to scale drone operations across large organizations. And DroneDeploy’s App Market now has more than 80 software integrations, making it the largest drone data ecosystem on the planet.
