PrecisionHawk, a drone manufacturer spun out of Indiana University, has closed its series B round at close to $10m. The round was led by Millennium Technology Value Partners, with participation by existing investors Innovate Indiana Fund and Bob Young, co-founder of RedHat and Lulu.com.
The company, which previously raised $1m in August 2013, builds fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, and offers cloud-based software to process and analyse the collected data.
More than 50 clients – in industries ranging from energy to forestry and government – are currently using the company’s offering. Pat Lohman, chief operating officer, earned an MSc degree from Indiana University in kinesiology and ergonomics, which is how the company qualified for an investment by the Innovate Indiana Fund. The fund is managed by Indiana University Research and Technology, and targets early-stage startups with a university connection.
Ken Green, managing director at Innovate Indiana Fund, said: “Our fund is excited to see the progress PrecisionHawk has made since we led the series A round, both in the sophistication of the product and service and in the market adoption of the platform. This new round of funding validates the vision we saw when we were first introduced to the company two years ago, and we are very happy to have a quality firm like Millennium Technology Value Partners as part of the team.”
