Battle for UAS Market Supremacy Intensifies

Skydio is an American manufacturer of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)—colloquially, drones. Founded in 2014 and based in San Mateo, California, the company comprises personnel possessed of expertise in disciplines such as AI, robotics, aerospace engineering, imaging technology, and electric propulsion.

In March 2021, Skydio became the first U.S. drone manufacturer to exceed $1-billion in overall value.
On 07 February 2023, following a three-year period during which the company’s resources and market share grew by a reported 2,900-percent, Skydio announced it had raised $230-million by dint of a Series E funding round, thereby bringing the company’s total funding raised to $562-million and its overall valuation to north of $2.2-billion.

Skydio’s near-thirty-times growth—which has landed it among North America’s most upwardly-mobile technology concerns—was accomplished against the backdrop of a worldwide UAS market historically dominated by Chinese companies beholden to the policies and aims of China’s communist government. Escalating geo-political tensions have piqued worldwide need for cyber-secure drones suitable for use in Western nations’ critical infrastructure, public safety, and defense sectors.

Since 2022, Skydio has increased its personnel roster by some forty-percent. What’s more, the company’s new 36,000-square-foot, Hayward, California manufacturing facility has boosted Skydio’s drone production capacity by a factor of ten. To meet the projected future demands of its rapidly-growing global customer base, Skydio expects to create over 150 manufacturing jobs at its Hayward facility and other U.S. locations.
Currently, Skydio produces three UAS models: the Skydio X2, the Skydio S2+ Consumer, and the Skydio S2+ Enterprise. Skydio’s UAS platforms are supported by the company’s Skydio Dock docking system and proprietary 3D Scan, Cloud, and Autonomy software suites.

By virtue of their outstanding durability, maneuverability, configurability, and autonomy, Skydio UASs are eminently conducive to Battlefield Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); cinematic endeavors; law-enforcement overwatch; fire-fighting; search and rescue; bridge, power-plant, powerline, digital distribution, and cell-tower inspection; and job-site security and progress monitoring.
Skydio co-founder and CEO Adam Bry stated: “Drones enable the core industries that our civilization runs on—transportation, public safety, energy, construction, communications, defense, and more—to operate more safely and more efficiently, by putting sensors wherever they’re needed, whenever they’re needed, while keeping people safely on the ground.”

Aero-TV is a production of the Internationally syndicated Aero-News Network. Seen worldwide by hundreds of thousands of aviators and aviation adherents, ANN's Aero-TV has produced over 5000 aviation and feature programs, including nearly 2000 episodes of our daily aviation news program, AIRBORNE UNLIMITED, currently hosted by Holland Lee. Now in its third decade of operation, parent company Aero-News Network, has the most aggressive and intensive editorial profile of any aviation news organization and has published nearly a half-million news and feature stories since its inception -- having pioneered the online 24/7 aviation new-media model that so many have emulated.

©2023 Aero-News Network, Inc., ALL Rights Reserved

FMI: www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, www.skydio.com