Kespry raises $10M for commercial-grade drone system

Kespry the developer of commercial-grade drone system for aerial data capture, analysis, and visualization systems, announced that it has raised $10 million in Series A financing led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Kespry was founded in 2013 and received initial backing from Chmod Ventures. The company reports that new funds will finance go-to-market activities and further development of a drone system that allows businesses to reliably and easily collect, analyze, and evaluate aerial imagery.

“I’m tremendously proud of what the Kespry team has accomplished in the past year,” said Paul Doersch, Kespry CEO. “Today we are shipping a commercial-grade drone system that allows businesses to capture and examine useful aerial imagery from day one. With the strong backing of Lightspeed, we are ready to accelerate our sales to customers in construction, agriculture, mining, and other markets.”

The company says that its vision is to create a highly reliable end-to-end platform that simply and safely delivers on the promise of drone technology. Kespry has built an integrated system from mission planning to aerial data capture to cloud-based analytics and image delivery. Kespry team has an impressive pedigree including alumni from Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Harvard and prior experience includes Google X, NASA, BMW, Apple and Intel.

“In building a powerful off-the-shelf system to deliver aerial information, Kespry is well positioned to accelerate the commercial adoption of drones,” said John Vrionis, General Partner at Lightspeed. “Kespry is all about allowing commercial enterprises to focus on useful visual imagery, not the underlying details of operating drones safely and reliably.”

In its aim to create a simple-to-use product, Kespry has integrated high-performance computing power in its drones. This integration enables onboard use of a modern programming environment, advanced sensor processing algorithms, and high throughput wireless communication between the drone and the cloud. The company claims that the system is safer and more capable today, and it can more rapidly incorporate additional features tomorrow.

Although Kespry does not specifically focus on agriculture, a 2013 report (See report) suggests that agriculture will dwarf all other applications over the next decade, engulfing up to 90% of the market for commercial drone use.

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