Swiss Drone Startup Flyability Snags $8.6 million in VC Funding Round

Inspection drone provider Flyability has flown into some green skies—scooping up $8.6 million in Series C investment funding.

Led by Future Industry Ventures and Swisscom Ventures as well as existing investor, ETF Partners, the infusion will fuel Flyability’s product development and expansion of its indoor drone inspection efforts.

Founded in 2014, the Swiss startup specializes in drone B2B solutions for companies with a focus on energy, power generation, chemical, mining and maritime industries. The company deploys drones for indoor exploration and inspection of inaccessible or confined spaces.

“Flyability is an ideal investment for FIV fund. The aim of the fund is to identify and support the best among all emerging technology companies in Europe, having considerable potential to shape the future of industry,” FIV Managing Partner Olivier Schuepbach said.

Over the past six years, Flyability has soared from a spin-off of EPFL in Switzerland to a company with 100 employees driving indoor research and inspections with drones. The company has offices in Europe and the U.S. and a network of more than 50 resellers including China and Japan.

“We invest in ambitious start-ups with unparalleled expertise and innovative visions that deliver excellent technical solutions and demonstrate sustainable company growth. Flyability has convinced our team across the board, and we are very proud to be co-investing with Swisscom Ventures and ETF Partners in the future of the company.”

“This financing round represents an important milestone for Flyability”, said Patrick Thévoz, CEO of Flyability. “We are developing increasingly complete and complex platform solutions in order to better serve our more than 500 customers worldwide. We are very pleased that FIV, with its unique expertise and network in the field of industrial technology, together with the existing investors Swisscom Ventures and ETF Partners, will be participating in our journey to build a global technology company in our space.”

Flyability in the News

• February: The company opened its first U.S. office and offered its first-ever American user conference.
• January: Flyability and Pix4D joined forces to deliver 3D modeling capabilities to Flyability customers, allowing them a new level of data to assess problems during the inspection process.
• In 2019, helped solve a mystery at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in an attempt to find out if nuclear waste was still present in one of the plant’s decommissioned reactor pools. The company launched the Elios 2 indoor drone and visual data determined the pools were empty with no nuclear waste. Following the mission, the Chernobyl decommissioning team planned to include the visual evidence collected in a report submitted to international authorities regarding the status of the plant’s reactors.