Portuguese AI drone startup Tekever raises €70 million to expand operations

Tekever, a Portugal-based developer of a synthetic intelligence-driven drone platform, today announced it has raised €70 million, or $74 million, in new funding to scale up manufacturing and develop its market attain, particularly into the US.

The Collection B funding spherical was led by Baillie Gifford and backed by the NATO Innovation Fund, with participation from the U.Okay.-government-owned Nationwide Safety Strategic Funding Fund, Crescent Cove Advisors LP, Iberis Simper and Cedrus Capital.

Baille Gifford is thought for backing corporations corresponding to Airbnb Inc., Spotify AB and SpaceX. As compared, the NIF is a €1 billion bund launched in 2022 backed by 24 NATO allies to help early-stage startups and different enterprise capital funds creating dual-use rising applied sciences vital to safety and protection challenges.

Tekever offers what the corporate calls “intelligence-as-a-service” by delivering drone capabilities that may scan huge areas and share real-time knowledge with a big selection of clients, together with authorities, army and personal corporations. Functions of its know-how embody surveying for environmental points corresponding to oil spills, wildfires or flash floods and helping with search and rescue missions for protection functions.

The corporate’s platform has been deployed in Ukraine to contribute to long-range intelligence and reconnaissance.

Tekever differentiates itself from different drone platforms and aerospace corporations by sustaining full management over each side of its drone platform — airframe design, manufacturing payloads, avionics, software program, knowledge and AI. The corporate mentioned that enables it to adapt its platform capabilities quickly to altering buyer wants.

“We’re dwelling in a extremely unstable world, experiencing exponential change and the transformative energy of software program, AI and robotics,” mentioned Chief Govt Ricardo Mendes. “Tekever was constructed to embrace and leverage this actuality, offering its clients with future-proofed, AI-centric hardware-enabled programs produced at scale and successfully delivered and sustained globally.”

Drones constructed by the corporate embody capabilities corresponding to catapult and vertical takeoff-and-landing, or VTOL, with restoration strategies that embody conventional touchdown and parachute. The corporate has been engaged on constructing its largest drone ever, the ARX, which can have a most takeoff weight of 600 kilograms and incorporates superior AI applied sciences.

This increased carry-weight will permit it to deal with a swarm of smaller drones that can use it as a “mom” drone, marking it as the primary to take action within the firm’s product line. The ARX will coordinate the swarm of small drones to carry out complicated missions whereas within the discipline utilizing its AI capabilities.

Clients of Tekever embody the European Maritime Security Company and the U.Okay. House Workplace, in addition to protection and safety forces all through Europe, North America and Southeast Asia.

Picture: Tekever