DroneBase ended 2021 on a high note: we recently closed another significant round of funding, bringing last year's total to $27M, and announced our acquisition of Airprobe, adding their best-in-class solar AI solution while expanding our global footprint to India & APAC.
But most of all, we have been proud to support our customers as their trusted partner for intelligent aerial imagery in another challenging and complicated year. We never forget that at each and every customer, a real person bet their career on us: that our intelligent aerial imagery would give them a faster, safer, lower cost, and more accurate answer than the old school way of doing business. That is a truly humbling trust placed in DroneBase that we seek to reward with continual delivery for our customers in our software and in the field.
To that end, we continue to invest heavily to ensure our data analysis and data capture can scale to the global reach of our customers, and we never bottleneck their adoption of intelligent aerial imagery. We were excited to execute in over 25 countries in 2021, complete the year with over 60 GW of renewable energy inspected across Wind and Solar, and significantly reduce time and cost to a decision while our AI materially improved the accuracy of our analysis.
If we look into our crystal ball for 2022, here are three trends we see:
Owners of High-Value Infrastructure will Rally Around Single Integrations to Save Overhead:
There are 3 to 4 of us in the industry at an 8-figure revenue scale. While different, we all pursue a multi-asset approach where owners of high-value infrastructure can complete one software integration and get analysis across their asset classes (for us, Wind, Solar, and Property). While we believe intelligent aerial imagery is important, we think it is simply unwieldy and expensive for a large utility to have 4-5 software partners and dozens of data capture partners for this one small technology of the hundreds they need to think about every day.
Renewable Energy will Accelerate Past its Carbon-Heavy Peers because as New Technologies Themselves, They are Faster to Adopt an Ecosystem of New Technology Partners:
It has been incredibly exciting to witness the massive, global growth of wind and solar energy in 2021, but particularly rewarding for us to see 100%+ growth in the adoption of our technology for renewable energy. We are energized to be a secret technology weapon that lets solar, and wind accelerate past their carbon-heavy peers with faster, safer, cheaper, and more accurate inspections for longer-lasting, better-performing renewable energy sites. We share the urgency of our renewable energy partners to overcome inertia and simply adopt the best tools for the job like the world depends on it (because it probably does).
The “True Believers” get Rewarded:
The first several years of the intelligent aerial imagery industry felt challenging and sometimes punishing for the early-adopting customers and the passionate talent dedicated to our space. 2021 felt like a sea change in that regard. We were excited to see our customers start to beat their slower-to-adopt, old school peers, and those who bet on us within our customers get promoted in their organizations. Simply put, nothing is more rewarding.
At the same time, even two years ago, it was virtually impossible to hire ‘from the industry’. After our latest growth round raising a $20m growth round, we decided to barely list a job but instead hire and reward those passionate individuals who already bet their career on this industry or their asset class. While in many cases their first company (or two!) were not the right fit, we are committed to being that long-term focused, founder-led, sustainable home for our talent, so we can be the same for our customers. If that sounds like you, reach out to us.
To every customer, pilot, partner, and investor who trusted us with their data, livelihood, and capital in 2021, we thank you. We are so excited to build great technology with you and deliver for you in 2022.
