Company Has Raised $10 Million In Seed Funding To Accelerate Development

Open source drone software company Auterion has launched its enterprise drone operating system. The company raised $10 million in seed funding from Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures, to scale operations and speed up development of its platform. Following the investment, Auterion will continue to work in close alignment with the PX4 community, the most widely used open source drone autopilot software to bring the technology to the enterprise.

Commercial use cases for drones and autonomous robots range from survey and mapping, asset inspection, search and rescue, public safety and agriculture. Goldman Sachs predicts market demand for commercial drones products and services to grow to $13 billion by 2020.

Currently, there is no common operating system for commercial drones. This lack of a unifying standard leads to complications with interoperability between drones and services, compliance with drone safety regulations, and cyber-security. This is why Auterion has built the open source operating system for drones.

Many entrepreneurs and innovators have built successful businesses using PX4. To help fuel this growth, Auterion now offers an enterprise operating system that sits on top of PX4 to enable safe, cyber-secure, and compliant operations. By leveraging open source standards, Auterion maximizes interoperability and future-proofs the investment of its customers.

To enable the highest possible levels of integration between products, Auterion works in close collaboration with other Dronecode members including 3D Robotics, Airmap, ARM, Intel, NXP, Sony, STMicroelectronics, and Trimble. Auterion is the largest contributor to the PX4 ecosystem, and will continue to invest into the open source community. “There are important challenges that today’s market leader will encounter as they attempt to meet the diverse needs of the global drone marketplace," said Dr. Ray O. Johnson, former CTO of The Lockheed Martin Corporation. "Auterion, with its open software platform, is well positioned to dynamically respond to the wide range of solutions required for commercial and defense applications.”

“With the US being one of the largest commercial drone markets, it was important for Costanoa Ventures to find the right partner to accelerate the transformation that autonomy will bring to the US market. Auterion’s open source, community-inclusive approach and customer-focused enterprise productization is world-class – feedback from those in the ecosystem has been stellar and we expect them to continue to be a shining light in the industry," said Greg Sands, Founder at Costanoa Ventures.

"At PrecisionHawk it is essential for us to support a diverse range of drones and drone technologies for mission critical applications. The Auterion platform, with its roots in open source and flexible interfaces combined with enterprise-class services, is a perfect fit that helps us double-down on our growth plans,” said Michael Chasen, CEO PrecisionHawk.

Auterion’s operating system enables manufacturers to build their products on global and safe standards using common infrastructure so that they can focus on their core differentiation and save time and resources when bringing new products to market. Likewise, component, software, module and service vendors are empowered to rapidly create unique and competitive solutions, secure in the knowledge that a compatible ecosystem allows developers to integrate their products. Similarly, the Auterion cloud enables drone service providers to fly with confidence, monitor devices, and support a diverse range of drones and drone technologies for mission-critical applications. Drone operations go from manual ad-hoc processes to operations at scale.

“Every successful open source ecosystem needs enterprise software vendors to make the work of the community accessible to the industry. The creation of Auterion shows that the Dronecode Project is mature and PX4 is ready for the enterprise," said Chris Anderson, CEO 3D Robotics.

“Drones and autonomous robots can enable the development of entirely new transportation and logistics solutions, bringing unrivaled efficiencies and cost savings in the process," said Toby Coppel, Co-Founder and Partner of Mosaic Ventures. "Auterion’s software platform enables drone service providers to enter this new era in a compliant and safe manner. We love partnering with founders who are fundamentally reshaping markets and look forward to working with the Auterion team on the journey ahead.”

Auterion’s operating system is available as a subscription service (SaaS) encompassing three main components: the software that runs on the drone, a cloud-based analytics suite for device and fleet management, and the enterprise customer success program.

(Source: Auterion news release)

FMI: www.auterion.com