The American drone manufacturer, Skydio, has successfully raised an extension round of $170 million (€162 million), in addition to the $230 million (€219 million) Series E the company closed last year. This move from Skydio will attract strategic investors such as Japanese telecom operator KDDI and Axon. Previous investors are also included in this tranche of funding like Linse Capital, the company that owns more than 21% of Skydio.

According to reports, this new funding comes at the same time with other skyrocketing defense tech fundings that are estimated with a value of over $9.1 billion (€8.6 billion) in the first half of 2024.

Managing Director of Linse Capital, Bastiaan Janmaat, said that this investment is a no-brainer for his company. He added: `Because we´re getting in at the same valuation, even though the business has doubled´. Janmaat added further that the extension round was kickstarted by KDDI´s interest, which had previously pumped about $60 million (€57 million) into Skydio and plans to use drones in over 1000 places in Japan. KDDI will also help Skydio with LTE connectivity for the drones.

The pitch deck from Linse Capital is advertizing Skydio´s idea of diversifying its revenue and increasing profitability. The startup had over $100 million (€95 million) last year in revenue, 30% of which came from software. Skydio is projected to reach around $180 million (€171 million) in revenue, thanks to the company´s traction with enterprise and public safety customers.

Despite the extension round and the different contracts, Skydio will cash out around $238 million (€226million) from capital by 2029 to add more products faster, stating it as `aggressive´ investment by Janmaat.

The future of Skydio is still dependent on hardware releases, along with convincing companies to buy their drones instead of competitors´, like DJI and Brinc.

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