The world’s largest producer of commercial vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones, Wingtra, has announced a $22m (c.£18m) series B funding round amid a drive to accelerate global operations.
The funding round included DiamondStream Partners; EquityPitcher Ventures; Verve Ventures; the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund); ACE & Company; and John L. Steffens (founder of Spring Mountain Capital).
Wingtra manufactures professional mapping drones, develops the software for fully autonomous flights, and the WingtraPilot app operates the combined solution for the collection and processing of aerial survey data.
The drones conduct over 100,000 flights annually, having mapped 18 million acres of land and sea (the equivalent of 13.6M football fields).
The team released its second generation drone in 2021.
‘Sustainable and efficient’
Wingtra is the brainchild of entrepreneurs Maximilian Boosfeld (CEO); Basil Weibel (VP Growth); Elias Kleimann (CFO); and Sebastian Verling (lead engineer).
Wingtra started life as a thesis paper for the university and became a startup at the Wyss Zurich accelerator to an internationally expanding scale-up business.
Today, it is the world’s largest producer of commercial VTOL drones.
Maximilian Boosfeld, CEO and co-founder of Wingtra, said: “Our vision at Wingtra is to create a world where drones help people make the management of large parts of our planet more sustainable and efficient.
“We reduced the cost of adopting drone assets and increased the data quality.
“This will help industry to plan better and, fundamentally, improve safety for humans and the environment.
“We have built the best tool for accurate data collection and have created solutions together with our partners for a variety of use cases our customers face.
“As an example, our solution is used in all stages of the construction life cycle: from the concept phase (feasibility & right-of-way studies), over the design phase (bidding process, detailed design & site planning), the construction phase (progress tracking to built survey all the way to maintenance, repair, and operations).”
He added: “And the same holds true for use cases in agriculture, land management, and environmental protection.
“We will continue to innovate and solve the problems of the future with easy to use solutions.”
New hirings
Wingtra recently reinforced its senior leadership with five new appointments:
- Marcos Bayuelo joins from Hexagon AB as VP of Product
- Aleksandar Kostadinov joins as VP of Sales and Customer Success
- Alberto Toledo joins from Citrix as GM in the US
- Corinna de Maddalena joins as VP of People
- Marco Schicker joins from Hilti AG as COO
Boosfeld said: “Every one of these leaders has the right experience to take Wingtra forward – they have all successfully grown several organisations to the next level.
“With this funding round, the right people and market leading product we are well set to accelerate the company growth.”
DiamondStream Partners Dean Donovan: “We are very excited about partnering with Wingtra.
“The product’s simplicity of use, its high reliability engineering, and the company’s global network of value-added resellers and service providers have positioned it to expand its leadership in the $83bn+ mapping segment of the aerial intelligence market globally.
“We look forward to helping the company in the United States and Latin America, which will be increasingly important geographies as Wingtra continues to expand.”
Image: Wingtra’s second generation drone WingtraOne GEN II
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