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Commercial drone startup PrecisionHawk raises $75M round
Enterprise drone startup PrecisionHawk Inc. today said it has raised $75 million in a late-stage round that it claimed makes it the world’s most well-capitalized commercial drone maker.
Including the new Series D round, PrecisionHawk has now raised $102 million in total. It plans to use the money to hire more people, focus on product innovation and make strategic acquisitions.
Founded in 2011, PrecisionHawk offers a commercial drone platform consisting of both its own fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles, along with a data management and analysis platform geared at giving deeper insights to enterprise users from the imagery captured by its drones.
The combination of both developing drones and the analytics tools with an end-to-end pitch at enterprise users is claimed to be working well. The company said that it hired more than 100 new employees in 2017, allowing it to expand into new industries such as energy, insurance, government and construction in addition to its original agriculture business. Existing customers include Monsanto, Exxon Mobil and United Services Automobile Association.
“While scores of drone-tech companies have sprung up to address one piece of the difficulties businesses face while assessing how to integrate drone data, PrecisionHawk’s vision is broader,” the company claimed in a release.
When most people think of drones, they may think of either toys and hobbyists or machines used to kill terrorists. But the commercial drone market is gaining a lot of attention and is set for rapid growth. According to Research & Markets, the global commercial drone market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15.5 percent through 2023. Statistica claims that the commercial drone market will hit $6.4 billion by 2020.
The round was led by Third Point Ventures and included Comcast Ventures, Senator Investor Group, Constellation Technology Ventures, Syngenta Ventures, Intel Capital, Millennium Technology Value Partners, DuPont and Verizon Ventures and other investors.
Image: PrecisionHawk
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