Business Venture

Drone-maker Skydio Secures $100M Series C To Grow In New Markets

Drone-maker Skydio raised a $100 million Series C round of funding led by Next47, the company said Monday.

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Redwood City, California-based Skydio uses artificial intelligence to create flying machines that are used by consumer, enterprise and government customers, the company said in a written statement.

“Enterprises have tasted the value that drones can provide, but are also feeling the pain of conventional manually flown systems. Deployment of drones are constrained by training time, pilot availability and the difficulty of performing important tasks like detailed inspection,” said Skydio co-founder and CEO Adam Bry in a written statement.

New investors Levitate Capital and NTT DOCOMO Ventures participated in the Series C, as did existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, IVP and Playground Global. This brings the company’s total funding to $170 million since Skydio was founded in 2014, the company said. This new funding is the company’s largest investment to date, according to Crunchbase data. Skydio previously raised funds in 2018, a $42 million Series B led by IVP and Playground.

Business Insider Intelligence estimates that the drone services market size is expected to grow to $63.6 billion by 2025. As such, Skydio said it plans to utilize the new funding to accelerate product development and expand further into the enterprise and public sector markets.

In June, the company announced it had restarted production of its Skydio 2 drone after pausing for the global pandemic.

“The drone market has reached a critical mass of commercial revenues and top-down buying behaviors, solidifying our thesis that now is the right time to invest,” said T.J. Rylander, general partner at Next47, in a written statement. “Skydio has what we firmly believe is the best autonomy stack in the world. While their innovation is in the software, they also developed the hardware to create an integrated product that fully capitalizes on autonomous capabilities.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

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