Autonomous drone solutions provider Percepto has raised a whopping $67 million in Series C funding. Led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), this fresh equity and debt funding brings the total investment in the drone company to more than $120 million to date.
Israel-based Percepto recently received a groundbreaking beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The nationwide waiver allows the company to remotely operate autonomous drones at any critical infrastructure site in the US without requiring site-specific approvals from the FAA.
Further, the waiver frees Percepto’s clients from several logistical and cost barriers because it negates the need for ground-based or airborne radars and people on the ground alike. Overall, the drone solution automates the entire visual inspection workflow, from data collection to AI-powered analysis and insights. And problems such as gas leaks, overheating, and infrastructure deterioration are detected faster so companies, such as Siemens Energy, can take preventative measures before they escalate into incidents.
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Percepto gives the example of another oil and gas client as well who is using its Air Max OGI drone. According to Percepto, this customer detected within hours a methane gas leak that could have gone unnoticed for months using conventional methods. Automated inspection drones saved the company millions of dollars while minimizing safety risks to workers and preventing environmental damage.
Multiple subsidiaries of Koch Industries are also using Percepto’s automated drones for inspection and monitoring purposes. As Chase Koch, founder and CEO of Koch Disruptive Technologies, explains:
Having deployed Percepto’s technology across various Koch companies, we are experiencing first-hand how its innovative R&D improves inspection and monitoring.
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Percepto cofounder and CEO Dor Abuhasira adds, “KDT’s reinvestment underlines their confidence in our ability to make companies more profitable by keeping infrastructure operational in the face of the unpredictable.”
Abuhasira stresses that organizations are increasingly discovering the benefits of autonomous and remote drone operations to automate facility inspections and data analysis across their sites. “With this new round of funding, new strategic investors, and the new regulations that significantly increase access to using autonomous drones, the conditions are ripe for the autonomous drone market to expand, and for Percepto to meet the growing demand for automated drone inspections and monitoring at industrial sites,” says Abuhasira.
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