PrecisionHawk, an information delivery company that uses a small, lightweight UAVs and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyze aerial data, today announced it has closed a Series B financing round of approximately $10 million led by New York City-based investor Millennium Technology Value Partners.
Existing investors Bob Young, co-founder of RedHat and founder and CEO of Lulu.com, and the Innovate Indiana Fund, an Indiana University-affiliated venture company, also participated in the round. PrecisionHawk plans to use the proceeds to further invest in product development, engineering and talent to support a growing network of global clients and expand its sales and marketing activities.
“Our firm believes that substantial value is being created by the transformative effect of UAV technology,” said Samuel Schwerin, founder and Managing Partner of Millennium Technology Value Partners. “PrecisionHawk envisions a world, as we do, where businesses across a wide variety of industries can access aerial information and gain actionable insights in an affordable, turnkey manner. This investment is a way to accelerate the development of an open platform for many innovative applications to be built upon.”
Precision Hawk has more than 50 customers, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and education institutions and its use spans a wide variety of industries from agriculture, energy, forestry, and government, to environmental protection and more, are in the process of adopting PrecisionHawk’s UAV and data platform.
“At the end of the day, our customers want a cost-effective, easy to use and efficient solution that will allow them to do more with less,” said PrecisionHawk CEO Christopher Dean. “The close of this funding round, with such well-respected investors, is an exciting step forward and clear validation of our end-to-end approach and market leadership.”
PrecisionHawk customers, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and education institutions, regularly leverage significant amounts of data to support their day-to-day business practices and recognize that the value delivered extends far beyond the unmanned aircraft itself. With UAV technology poised to erupt across civilian markets, enterprise customers understand the product value is in the delivery of usable and relevant information to decision-makers. Aerospace industry analysts estimate global spending on UAVs is likely to reach $77 billion or more over the next 10 years.
“This is a brand new industry, like aviation in the 1920s,” said Bob Young, co-founder of RedHat. “There is the same feeling of grand potential and optimism in the space. With that level of hype, will you ever achieve it? I believe we will. It is the early days, and PrecisionHawk is making huge strides by delivering new tools, in a user-friendly and cost effective way, to people who depend on better information to advance.”
Commercial drone activity is still illegal under existing U.S. laws without a special approval by the FAA, and it’s been suggested that the approval process for new rules for commercial drone operations could take several years.
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