Autonomous drone mapping startup Emesent raises $23M for global expansion

Australian startup Emesent has scooped up an impressive $23 million (AUD 32 million) in Series A funding to take its autonomous drone mapping and analytics tech to new markets across the globe.

The oversubscribed funding round was led by Australian investment firm Perennial Partners, with significant participation from international investors Tiger Global and TELUS Ventures. Investors from the startup’s seed round, Main Sequence and Archangel Ventures, also contributed.

While the fresh cash infusion will help Emesent to achieve its rapid global growth targets faster, it’s worth mentioning that the drone autonomy company already boasts more than 300 customers in 40 countries.

According to Emesent cofounder and CEO, Dr Stefan Hrabar, the funding would be used to double the size of the engineering team, especially in the area of data analytics.

We’re also building state-of-the-art manufacturing, calibration, and test facility near our Brisbane headquarters to meet growing demand, as well as opening offices in the US and UK.

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Hrabar further points out that autonomous data capture and analytics is providing significant benefits to the mining and infrastructure sectors – the impetus from which has allowed his staff to grow from seven to 130 in just three years. In the mining sector particularly, Emesent’s Hovermap technology is helping conglomerates like BHP, Glencore, and Anglo American to obtain high-quality mapping data to improve safety and productivity.

And now, the company is ready to expand to other verticals as well. As Hrabar explains:

Our drone autonomy, LiDAR mapping, and analytics technology will benefit the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector, as well as the oil and gas and defense markets.

In the meantime, Tiger Global partner Griffin Schroeder stresses that Emesent is pushing the boundaries of what could be done with drone autonomy. Schroeder sums up:

Emesent’s leading drone-based data capture platform gives companies unprecedented access to some of the most challenging geographies. From a safe distance, enterprises can now collect high-quality data that was previously impossible to acquire.

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