PrecisionHawk secures $75 million to foster global adoption of commercial drone technology

PrecisionHawk Inc., a leading provider of drone technology for the enterprise – announced recently it has raised a $75 million round of funding from a group of venture and strategic investors. This investment brings PrecisionHawk's total funding to more than $100 million since being founded in 2010, making it the world's most well-capitalized commercial drone company.
The round was led by Third Point Ventures. Additional new investors include Comcast Ventures, Senator Investor Group, Constellation Technology Ventures and Syngenta Ventures, among others, with participation from existing investors Intel Capital, Millennium Technology Value Partners, DuPont, Verizon Ventures, a subsidiary of USAA, and Indiana University's Innovate Indiana Fund.

"We see the potential for PrecisionHawk to enable enterprises around the world with new tools for 21st century opportunities," said Robert Schwartz, Managing Partner of Third Point Ventures. "We believe the business insight that can be achieved with PrecisionHawk technology will be a catalyst for profound transformation, and this investment gives us an opportunity to support their growth and continued industry leadership."

With this investment, PrecisionHawk can build upon its lead in the commercial drone space and apply capital to expand its team, focus on product innovation and make strategic acquisitions. This is all part of a broader mission to foster the adoption of commercial drones and capture the global market opportunity.

"Syngenta has been a PrecisionHawk customer since 2015 and has experienced first-hand the impact of the technology platform; both augmenting and replacing a variety of manual processes for more efficient and scalable operations," said Katrin Burt, Managing Director of Syngenta's venture capital group. "This investment reflects our commitment to advancing technologies that could have a real impact within agriculture and our excitement about the potential for PrecisionHawk to lead the commercial drone space across multiple industries."

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.

"PrecisionHawk's mission is to empower the enterprise pioneer, from pilot to deployment. To drive transformational change, we believe a business needs an integrated hardware-software platform and the technical support to connect to existing systems and workflows," said Michael Chasen, PrecisionHawk CEO. "Drones are not only replacing old information with more precise information. They are providing an entirely new layer that was previously unattainable or economically prohibitive to collect. With advanced sensors such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and the analytics to interpret their outputs, organizations are gaining unprecedented visibility into their work. Ultimately, making them more profitable and sustainable."

The size of the funding round speaks to the pace of PrecisionHawk's growth, and what investors see as a growing business opportunity in commercial drone technology.

"Drones are increasingly providing valuable insights to businesses across a wide variety of industries, and PrecisionHawk is leading the way in many innovative and forward-thinking applications," said ClearSky Managing Director James Goldinger, who has joined the PrecisionHawk board of directors.
Goldman Sachs Research predicts that the sector's fastest growth will come from businesses and civil governments, who are expected to spend $13 billion on drones through 2020.

 "We've followed the enterprise drone market the last few years and noticed the commercial progress Michael Chasen has been able to make since he joined as CEO last year. Under his leadership, the company has extended its lead in agriculture and expanded into verticals like insurance, construction, energy and the government with outstanding success," said Michael Yang, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures. "We believe PrecisionHawk's drone solutions will deliver tremendous value for customers in these sectors."

To keep up with the increasing demand, PrecisionHawk has grown rapidly in a short period of time. The company hired over 100 new employees in 2017 and expanded its ability to provide services around the world and across a variety of industries, adding product offerings in energy, insurance, government and construction. The broader focus is in addition to its long-standing work with agriculture's leading enterprises.