Investors Drop $75M on Drone Technology
Demand for drone technology is rising and large corporations have taken notice. Investors recently gave $75 million to PrecisionHawk Inc., a drone manufacturer, to support the growth of the drone industry.
Investors included Third Point Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Constellation Technology Ventures and Syngenta Ventures, all of which regularly invest in technology in industries like healthcare, media, energy and agriculture.
Many of the investors saw this as an opportunity to improve technology in an industry that was important to their consumers.
"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," says 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.”
PrecisionHawk has expanded from agriculture into markets like insurance, construction, energy and government as the market for drone technology has developed.
Across industries, the drone technology sector is projected to grow, but according to Goldman Sachs Research, the fastest growing sector is businesses and civil governments. This sector is predicted to spend $13 billion on drones through 2020.
The $75 million that was recently invested brings the total investment in PrecisionHawk to $100 million. The drone company plans to use the money to hire new employees, further product innovation and make strategic purchases.
“With advanced sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging and the analytics to interpret their outputs, organizations are gaining unprecedented visibility into their work,” says Michael Chasen, PrecisionHawk CEO, “ultimately, making them more profitable and sustainable."
