The drone market has heated up considerably since Valor co-lead the Series Seed investment in Aerobo Drones of Brooklyn, New York last year. This year, drone startup investments have crossed a new high water market, with $1.2 billion invested in 2017 so far. (Last year, about the time we invested in Aerobo, there was only about $600 million invested in drone startups.) It’s the first time the UAV industry has crossed a billion dollars of invesment in one year.
Success for drone startups is in increasing automation, according to Aerobo
Catching up privately with founder Brian Streem, he was focused on his vision of making aerial drone imagery more accessible and more available than ever. “While we’re busy scaling and serving customers from our new West Coast office in Los Angeles and our headquarters in Brooklyn, we’re expanding the tech team to deliver more automation,” he shared. Aerobo has had many firsts in the last year, including filming the first virtual reality TV series. Brian was called out this summer by Inc. Magazine as one of the “30 Most Brilliant Founders Under 30.”
Drone startup investments 2017 so far
For a sense of just how diverse and heated the drone market is becoming, here’s a list of some of the recent drone investments this year.
| Startup | Headquarters | What they do | Founded | Total Equity Funding | Number of Funding Rounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SafeSkies Systems Inc | San Francisco, California, United States | Automated safety systems for commercial drones | 3/1/17 | $50,000 | 1 |
| Strayos | Saint Louis, Missouri, United States | 3D Aerial intelligence platform for Mining and Surveying industry | 3/1/17 | $350,000 | 1 |
| CrowdAI | Mountain View, California, United States | CrowdAI provides scalable and high-quality image annotation. | 1/1/16 | $2,120,000 | 2 |
| American Robotics | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | American Robotics is developing a practical drone system for farmers. | 1/1/16 | $1,100,000 | 1 |
| Drone Complier | Corvallis, Oregon, United States | Drone Complier is a drone compliance and business management software. | 1/1/16 | 1 | |
| WhiteFox Defense Technologies, Inc. | San Luis Obispo, California, United States | WhiteFox specializes in drone defense and security | 12/14/15 | $900,000 | 2 |
| Advanced Aircraft Company | Hampton, Virginia, United States | Advanced Aircraft Company is a manufacturer of vertical take off and landing aircrafts. | 10/2/15 | 1 | |
| Fathom | Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States | Fathom is the future of underwater exploration through an affordable, easy to use, underwater drone. | 4/1/15 | $120,000 | 1 |
| EagleEye Intelligence, LLC | Boca Raton, Florida, United States | EagleEye Intelligence provides incident management and aerial platform solutions for public safety and security | 3/12/15 | $9,700,000 | 3 |
| DroneTerminus | Boca Raton, Florida, United States | We are the last mile solution. Making autonomous drone delivery safer by removing the human intervention element altogether. | 2/1/15 | 1 | |
| SkySafe | San Diego, California, United States | Safely take control of reckless or malicious drones. | 1/1/15 | $14,500,000 | 2 |
| Iris Automation | San Francisco, California, United States | Iris Automation provides robust collision avoidance systems for industrial drones. | 1/1/15 | $2,000,000 | 3 |
| Kittyhawk | San Francisco, California, United States | Real-Time Drone Operations | 1/1/15 | $1,400,000 | 3 |
| Drone Racing League | New York, New York, United States | Drone racing is a real future of the sport that combines the best of e-sports Formula 1 and a touch of virtual reality. | 1/1/15 | $21,000,000 | 3 |
| Betterview | San Francisco, California, United States | Betterview is the leading platform for drone-based property inspections. | 12/15/14 | $3,550,000 | 4 |
| Avision Robotics | Santa Monica, California, United States | AVISION is a SaaS solution for startups to enterprise companies utilizing UAVs for commercial purposes. | 10/1/14 | $150,000 | 2 |
| Cape Productions | Redwood City, California, United States | Cape Productions is a company that offers the ability to control drones that record video from anywhere in the world. | 6/13/14 | $10,000,000 | 2 |
| Measure | Washington, District of Columbia, United States | Measure offers Drone as a Serviceå¨. | 6/1/14 | $20,500,000 | 3 |
| Skydio | Menlo Park, California, United States | Skydio drones navigate the world intelligently | 1/1/14 | $56,000,000 | 3 |
| Dedrone | San Francisco, California, United States | Dedrone develops drone detection technology with automated, software-based aerial intrusion. | 1/1/14 | $27,900,000 | 3 |
| Airdog | Palo Alto, California, United States | AirDog is a foldable drone, designed for autonomous video shooting in action sports. | 1/1/14 | $7,172,917 | 5 |
| Animusoft | Miami, Florida, United States | Drone agnostic real time edge computing platform to operate drones, manage fleets of drones, and analyze / integrate actionable .results. | 1/1/14 | $1,600,000 | 4 |
| DroneAi | Santa Monica, California, United States | Drone navigation company solving the most important and complex issue facing drone delivery using patent navigation system and AI | 1/1/14 | $2,000,000 | 2 |
| Flirtey | Reno, Nevada, United States | Flirtey is a company that is reinventing the delivery process for humanitarian, online retail, and food delivery industries | 11/1/13 | $16,040,876 | 4 |
| Identified Technologies | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States | Identified Technologies offers its industrial customers with a mapping drone solution to increase project visibility and team productivity. | 7/10/13 | $3,500,000 | 4 |
| 3D Robotics | Berkeley, California, United States | 3DR makes advanced drone technology easily accessible to the construction, mining, and surveying industries for use in data analysis. | 1/1/09 | $178,775,000 | 6 |
| Skyways | Austin, Texas, United States | Skyways builds vertical take-off and landing drones to be used by the military for transporting things without putting people in danger. | $1,120,000 | 2 |