September 4th, 2018 – Las Vegas, NV – Auterion, the world’s largest open source drone software company, today launched its enterprise drone operating system. The company raised $10m in seed funding from Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures, to scale operations and speed up the 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.
The operating system for commercial drones
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 $13bn 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. Auterion, with its open software platform, is well positioned to dynamically respond to the wide range of solutions required for commercial and defense applications.”
Dr. Ray O. Johnson, former CTO of The Lockheed Martin Corporation
“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.“
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.”
Michael Chasen, CEO PrecisionHawk
How it works – Auterion is PX4 for the enterprise
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.
Chris Anderson, CEO 3D Robotics
“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.”
“Drones and autonomous robots can enable the development of entirely new transportation and logistics solutions, bringing unrivaled efficiencies and cost savings in the process. 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!”
Toby Coppel, Co-Founder and Partner of Mosaic Ventures
How to get started with the Auterion Operating System
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.
To learn more about Auterion meet the team at Interdrone at booth #822 or visit www.auterion.com
About Auterion
Auterion, the largest open source drone software company, is a leader in a movement that is bigger than itself. The company builds the tested, certified, and long-term supported distribution of the most widely used drone open source operating system, PX4. Auterion supports the core development in PX4 and partners with leading tech and service companies in Dronecode to bring the best technologies and integrations to the ecosystem through its distribution. Auterion is co-founded by Lorenz Meier, creator of Pixhawk, founder of PX4 and named MIT Innovator 35 under 35, and Kevin Sartori, UC Berkeley MBA and drone industry veteran from Silicon Valley.
www.auterion.com
About Lakestar
Lakestar is one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms investing in technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs. Early investments included Skype, Spotify, Facebook and airbnb. Since raising their last two funds with an aggregate volume of approx. EUR 500m in 2013 and 2015, Lakestar has expanded and broadened their portfolio, with more recent investments in Harry’s, Opendoor, Blockchain.com, GoEuro, FiveAI and Revolut. Lakestar has a presence in Berlin, Zurich and London.
Lakestar helps companies to identify new markets and expand into them rapidly, with a focus on the US and Europe. The investments range from early stage companies to those in their growth stage.
About Mosaic Ventures
Mosaic Ventures is a Silicon Valley-style venture capital firm based in London, focused on investing in the most ambitious European technology companies at Series A. Founded in 2014 by experienced investors, we are investing our first fund of $150m founding teams that are fundamentally reshaping big markets. The partners of the firm have over 25 years of experience investing on both sides of the Atlantic. In that time, they have invested across 10 countries in over 70 companies that together have created over $400bn of value, and bring extensive operating experience at leading West Coast startups.
About Costanoa Ventures
Silicon Valley-based Costanoa Ventures backs tenacious and thoughtful founders who change how business gets done. Costanoa seeks to be a long-term partner to entrepreneurs building durable companies leveraging data to solve complex business problems. For more information, please visit www.costanoavc.com
About Tectonic Ventures
Tectonic Ventures partners with authentic entrepreneurs reshaping the Enterprise through technology-driven solutions. We invest from inception to seed-stage and take a collaborative approach to supporting teams, nurturing them as they scale and develop world-class execution. We provide experience, an expansive network and the mindset of an entrepreneur to help companies realize their vision. The firm’s portfolio includes companies such as Humatics, Kymeta and Xenex. Remarkable founders have a vision that will shift the future. Learn more: www.tectonicventures.com
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Appendix
Supporting quotes
“Open source has transformed the drone industry over the past 10 years and is now the driving force to scale up enterprise operations.“
Lorenz Meier, Co-Founder Auterion
“Autonomy will change the status quo and enable use cases that are unthinkable today, unlocking the next level of value. Our technology scales from drones to any other autonomous system such as self-driving delivery rovers.“
Kevin Sartori, Co-Founder Auterion
“From our Boston office, surrounded by some of the best universities in the world, we have direct line of sight into remarkable entrepreneurs building next-generation Enterprise-focused software, robotics, and drone companies. Auterion is an outlier and stands out for the authenticity of its team, its community, and technology – they have all the elements to disrupt the current dynamics and bring the commercial drone industry to the next level.”
Matt Rhodes-Kropf, MIT Professor and Founder at Tectonic Ventures
“As corporations start to integrate drones into their daily business operations, they are looking for sophisticated and consolidated hardware and software solutions. Our integration with Auterion enables the entire Dronecode ecosystem to seamlessly access AirMap UTM services for safe and compliant operations at scale. We are proud to partner with Auterion and look forward to seeing what AirMap-powered applications the Dronecode community builds next.“
Ben Marcus, Co-founder and Chairman at AirMap
“Thanks to the integration with Auterion, drone manufacturers and service providers can now seamlessly connect and operate Sony’s leading-edge enterprise cameras for mapping, inspection and surveillance use cases, which helps accelerate their time to market as well as enhance their platform’s utility, reliability and image data quality.“
John Monti, Director, Visual Imaging Solutions at Sony Electronics
“Intel RealSense technology is used to build products that enrich people’s lives through devices and machines that perceive the world in 3D. We are excited to see RealSense technology being used by Auterion for collision avoidance and visual inertial odometry.”
Sagi BenMoshe, VP and general manager of the Intel RealSense Group
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