Airspace Link, Inc., the leading North American provider of solutions designed to help the FAA, state and local government agencies better plan for and manage the safe integration of drones into their communities, today announced it completed a $10 million series A capital raise with Altos Ventures. Founded in 1996, Altos Ventures is an early-stage investor based in the Bay Area with a global investment focus in consumer and enterprise companies. Altos currently manages more than $10 billion in regulatory assets under management across 100+ companies.
“We’re excited to partner with the Airspace Link team to help them build the digital infrastructure for safe drone flights domestically and around the globe,” said Dillon Krasnigor from Altos Ventures. “We were impressed with the Airspace team’s deep domain expertise and their vision of how unmanned drones will be used over the next decade and beyond. We believe the company will be a key player in making mass unmanned drone flights a reality.”
Also completing the series A raise alongside Altos Ventures is Thales, leading provider of air traffic management systems which manage 40% of the world’s airspace, and a global technology leader with operations in more than 68 countries. Thales generated €18.5 billion (EUR) in revenues in 2020 and is the eighth largest defense contractor in the world.
“As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) usage continues to grow, for safe, low altitude operations around communities, airspace management must combine both air and ground insights,” said Todd Donovan, Thales Vice President, Airspace Mobility Solutions Americas. “Our deep knowledge of airspace management and Airspace Link’s expertise in geospatial intelligence are the perfect combination to address this complex challenge.”
Before this 2021 raise, Airspace Link secured investments from previous Investors, Indicator Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Techstars and Dan Gilbert’s Detroit Venture Partners (DVP).
“Airspace Link acts like the Google Maps (Waze) for drones, but the roads, rules and regulations are not in place yet,” CEO Michael Healander said. Airspace Link’s FAA-approved Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability platform is a transportation planning tool for integrating drones into the national airspace and our communities. The platform is being used by state and local government transportation groups to prepare, plan, build, manage and engage the drone community.
Earlier this month, Airspace Link took part in the first multi-modal transport demonstration in Ohio using ground and air autonomous vehicles. The mission which was led by VyrtX, a logistics software provider, and JobsOhio, entailed the delivery of blood tubes, vessels and tissues using a small Unmanned Aircraft System meeting up with a larger autonomous helicopter at KOSU airport, which transported the first 3-D printed kidney on a perfusion device to KMRT airport in Marysville, Ohio. Airspace Link’s AirHub solution offered the digital infrastructure to ensure safety of the operation by facilitating the authorization for the on-airport portion of the UAS operation and to compute the safest route for the longer leg of the transport to KMRT. Airspace Link’s digital infrastructure solutions are being incorporated into other advanced UAS systems across the U.S., designed to enable the UAS industry to safely scale.
The company is led by Michael Healander along with founding members Ana Healander and Daniel Bradshaw, who grew the Detroit-based team to 20 full-time staff in the last year and has developed partnerships with over forty government agencies and municipalities in the United States to implement Airspace Link’s AirHub™ platform for drone infrastructure.
“Our core purpose is to safely integrate drones into the national airspace and our communities at scale,” said Healander. “We thank Altos Ventures and Thales for joining our vision of paving the way for the drone economy with shared, neutral and affordable UAS infrastructure.”
