Berkeley-based drone manufacturer 3DR may be back in the game: the company announced $53 million in Series D funding on Thursday. This announcement comes less than a year from 3DR’s last influx of $26.7 million last June.
The new round included both new equity and conversion of debt equity: how much of each has not yet been disclosed. But clearly, investors are still willing to bet on 3DR’s ability to turn themselves into a commercial drone platform.
3DR’s consumer drone, the Solo, is still used by many commercial drone operators. But 3DR’s production challenges led the company to stop making Solos in 2015, shifting to a commercial platform play. 3DR’s co-founder Chris Anderson said that the company was unable to compete with manufacturing giant DJI, even after moving its own production facility overseas. An overestimate of demand had left the company with warehouses full of Solos as DJI introduced newer versions of its popular Phantom lines.
After laying off a portion of its workforce and restructuring its executive team, the company announced a “change in direction” from the consumer to the commercial drone market. 3DR’s new signature product, Site Scan, is a SaaS offering that provides flight control and cloud-based data processing. The product integrates with Autodesk (an investor and channel partner for 3DR.) The integration overlays drone data output with site-plan information from Autodesk, giving a construction team additional information.
Autodesk was a leading investor in this most recent round also. “The strategic investment from the Autodesk Forge Fund — which follows an initial investment made in early 2016 — demonstrates Autodesk’s commitment to 3DR and reality capture software,” says 3DR. “We have already harnessed the power of the Forge platform to build key features for Site Scan, and will continue to utilize Forge to accelerate product development and deepen workflow integrations with Autodesk products.”
3DR says that it will use the new funding to continue to build out Site Scan.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
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how is this company still around, a warehouse full of Solos,,but people cannot buy any spares for their solos, they have got investors or funding in which will soon diminish for a company who is only software driven now sitescan and autodesk which is already been utilized,, feel sorry for the investors
Completely agree with you. They were interesting back in the day, long before the Solo, but went on some kind of corporate downward money grab spiral, bolstered by a lot of die hard fans.
They must be mad. Chris must have a real gift to convince people to invest that much money after everything that’s happened, or maybe they have something amazing planned?!
They simply have a great product in comparison( to all the others ,that i have i seen), with great attention to quality and detail that is has not been lost when trying to mass produce a great drone cheaply to work with moderate functionality with a prexisting line of go pro cameras.(black series cameras work best in my opinion).i have yet to try Sony upgrades.
I don’t think their Solo drone is really that great. I also think using Gopros is out of date these days, they just don’t cut it anymore. It’s why Yuneec, DJI, Autel et al are having their own, better cameras made and Gopro is losing money.
Fair enough comment,… They do sell other cars than Chevy although that an Buick are all that i drive, you may prefer a Ford or a pinto (jk ,lol). Gopro can be a pain to update firmware (an afterwards , you still don’t get allot of camerafunctions), but as far as being simple to operate and the modest $
Of only @3 or 4 bills, i still believe the solo to be the clear winner out of the group you listed.
The Gopro are pure trash. Over hyped cameras with cheap components and worse firmware. The company has terrible customer service. I own 2 3DRs a hexa and X8M. I stopped investing in gopros because they would shut down out of nowhere during a shoot and I would loose out on one off shots. Sorry but can’t be in business and trust that little plastic box ever again. Good enough for the kiddies but at 400 bucks a pop I will pass. I still own a 3 and 4 black and refuse to buy anymore. As far as 3DR this article is deceptive from its title. Last thing they state is the money is going towards Site Scan so that means don’t even think about another new drone.