Wingcopter raises $42m for drone production
German drone developer Wingcopter has added $42m (€45m) to its fundraising for series production.
The extended series A funding round brings the total raised to over $64m, adding German retailer REWE and German investors Salvia and XAI technologies as new shareholders. They were joined by Japanese conglomerate ITOCHU and previous backers Futury Capital from Germany and Silicon Valley-based Xplorer Capital.
REWE is one of Germany’s largest grocery reailers with over 12,000 stores across Europe and a sign that the company is expanding beyond medical delivery services in Africa.
Related articles
- World’s largest commercial drone deployment uses German tech
- Wingcopter tests out commercial Japanese drone delivery
- German drone maker raises $22m for series production
XAI technologies, founded by machine vision pioneer Enis Ersü, will add additional value thanks to the team’s deep knowledge and experience in the fields of sensor technology and industrial automation. Itochu is one of Japan’s largest trading companies and will open new doors to the promising Japanese market.
The funding will help to ramp up production of the Wingcopter 198 eVTOL system. Wingcopter has been experiencing a continuously growing demand for its new unmanned aircraft system and has already sold most production slots for this and next year. Wingcopter’s production facility in Germany is designed to manufacture thousands of Wingcopter drones per year and will soon start with partly automated production work, significantly speeding up the production process.
The funds will also be used to accelerate R&D for new product features and to hire 80 new employees across all departments within the next months. The new capital raise comes shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had approved the Airworthiness Criteria for the Wingcopter 198, which marked a critical milestone in the U.S. Type Certification Process of the company’s flagship aircraft.
“At Wingcopter, we create efficient and sustainable drone solutions to save and improve lives. For this, we are hiring passionate pioneers with whom we build what has not existed before,” said Tom Plümmer, Co-founder and CEO of Wingcopter. “The new funding, combined with growing revenues, puts us in an excellent position to establish our industry-leading drone delivery solution with our customers around the globe to optimize supply chains.”
Christoph Eltze, Executive Board member Digital, Customer & Analytics and IT at REWE Group, adds: “REWE Group is one of the most innovative companies in German retail. For years, we have relied on strong partnerships with innovation leaders, especially in emerging trends. With Wingcopter, we have found such a new partner.”
“With its disruptive technology and highly motivated team, Wingcopter has the potential to become a frontrunner in the drone delivery space. In the face of global challenges such as climate change, innovative companies such as Wingcopter are needed to lead an industry like logistics into a sustainable, more efficient future,” said Helmut Jeggle, Founder & Managing Partner of Salvia.
The company has a partnership agreement with Continental Drones that aims to deploy 12,000 Wingcopter drones over the next years to deliver much-needed goods throughout sub-Saharan Africa by building a new layer of infrastructure in the sky. Other Authorized Partners that act as strong local operators or distributors in their respective geographies include ITOCHU in Japan and Synerjet in Latin America, which both became investors in Wingcopter in addition to signing the partnership agreements.
In Malawi, where the company has been active since 2019, Wingcopter will expand its network operations with new Wingcopter 198 drones and more hubs, transporting various medical goods – including emergency medicines and COVID vaccines – to remote health centres, in line with the company’s goal to save and improve the lives of people all over the world.
Other articles on eeNews Europe
- The five biggest microcontroller suppliers in 2021
- D-Wave steps up battle for quantum computers
- World’s smallest GNSS module is 4.5mm square
- AI inference engine on 5nm hits 95TOPS/W
- Roadmap to quantum dot qubit arrays using FDSOI
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
