, a supplier of Drone-As-First-Responder (DFR) technology, announced that the company has raised $21.5 million in Series A funding to continue building DFR solutions and growing its engineering and go-to-market teams. CRV led the round with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Karman Ventures, Immad Akhund (CEO, Mercury), and Ford Street Ventures. The company raised its seed round in October 2023, led by a16z and 2048 Ventures, bringing its total funding to $28 million.
The money will also go toward expanding Aerodome’s headcount, which currently sits around 30 people.
“Upon experiencing Aerodome’s technology firsthand on a fly-along, I immediately recognized its potential to have a scalable impact on public safety and its ability to save lives,” said Saar Gur, General Partner, CRV and Aerodome’s newest board member. “Speed is of the essence in emergencies. Aerodome doesn’t just provide police agencies with ROI, it also gives them an insanely valuable source of real-time intelligence to first responders out in the field.”
Co-founded by Aerodome CEO and reserve police officer Rahul Sidhu and Aerodome Chief Architect Kenaniah Cerny, the company is ushering in a new era of DFR with a turnkey solution that is faster, safer, and more energy efficient than others on the market. By providing a fully automated and remote air support operating system, Aerodome equips agencies with a highly advanced, 24/7 solution that reduces the need for patrol officers to respond to calls by 15 percent while offering 80 percent faster response times.
“As the second officer in the country to launch a DFR program, I wanted to build a more advanced, automated solution that would reduce the strain on officer resources,” said Sidhu, also a former paramedic, crew chief, and pilot. “Our DFR 2.0 solution is a true force multiplier, since it only requires a single operator overseeing multiple drones at once. Our air traffic awareness system acts as a better observer than human pilots – capable of tracking planes, helicopters, other drones, and even birds in all directions, which saves precious time and resources for agencies.”
In just a year since its founding, Aerodome has secured contracts with police departments, nearly doubling its earnings projections for Q1 of 2024. Aerodome attributes its rapid growth to its advanced DFR system that is fully remote and automated, multi-station, and multi-drone. Agencies are using the Aerodome DFR system to accomplish an average 86-second response time to 911 calls, versus the average 7-8 minutes of many precincts reliant on traditional response measures alone. Additionally, with an average of two deaths per year from aviation-related crashes, plus widespread pollution from helicopters, DFR continues to offer a safer, more environmentally conscious supplement to police helicopters.
“Aerodome’s willingness to engage with our staff on the unique characteristics of our jurisdiction, and future directions with which to grow DFR capabilities, has led to high levels of confidence between our Department and their company,” said Lieutenant Robert Mitchell at Hawthorne Police Department. “We were happy to partner with Aerodome. They did what they said they were going to do, and more.”
Aerodome has also secured a new exclusive partnership with Hextronics, a world leader in enabling drone autonomy. Hextronics is supplying a drone dock that is purpose-built for DFR with a rapid, automated battery-changing system, HVAC system, and the ability to operate remotely in any condition.
Response time is Aerodome’s immediate value prop for potential clients. Sidhu says the drone’s average time to arrive on the scene is 85 seconds — a big improvement over the five or 10 minutes experienced in many locales. It might not sound like a lot, but this is one of those cases where a few minutes could mean the difference between life and death.
Aerodome doesn’t make the drones itself, at least not currently, Sidhu specifies. Instead it partners with hardware makers. In the wake of ongoing governmental scrutiny against DJI over alleged ties to the Chinese government, many jurisdictions are looking to work exclusively with American manufacturers.
Sidhu concedes, however, that DJI continues to be far ahead of the pack when it comes to certain aspects of surveillance.
“I call it the license plate test,” he said. “If you pop a drone up to 400 feet, DJI — in a very stable way — is able to read a license plate. American drone companies will struggle at that distance.”
Essentially, if the client wants to use DJI drones, they’ll work with DJI drones.
Skydio, perhaps the best-known American drone maker in the DFR space, has declined to partner with Aerodome, likely because it’d rather compete directly with its own in-house offering. The category has grown increasingly important for Skydio after it pivoted away from consumer drones, partially inspired by DJI’s addition to the government entity list.
Aerodome’s system is triggered by a 911 call. If it determines that a drone is necessary, it’s able to send one to the location in less than three minutes, owing to its decentralized launch facilities. Sidhu balks at the mention of “autonomy,” however.
“That implies some regulatory scrutiny, when you say things are autonomous,” he said. “I would say they’re ‘automated.’”
Here that means that the systems are able to “automatically” fly from the launch pad to the scene. A human is in the loop, mostly in a supervisory role and as a fail-safe, taking over control of the system if things get hairy; it’s something on which the FAA understandably insists.
Aerodrome isn’t disclosing the precise number of clients it’s currently working with. Sidhu says it’s working with four cities in Los Angeles County, with additional customers in the Bay Area, New Mexico and “other states.”
Sources: Press Release; TechCrunch