Drone startup Xtend raises $30M more in funding

Xtend Reality Inc., a startup focused on developing drone technology for the defense sector, has raised $30 million in funding.

Aliya Capital Partners and Protego Ventures led the investment. It was provided as an extension to a $40 million Series B funding round that Xtend originally announced last May. The company’s total outside funding now stands at $95 million.

Founded in 2018, Xtend provides a software platform called XOS that militaries use to operate drones. It’s designed to work with a virtual reality headset. Using the headset, the wearer can operate multiple drones at once and view footage from their cameras. 

XOS uses artificial intelligence to overlay additional data on the footage. It can, for example, highlight objects of interest in a drone video stream or collect coordinates. A dropdown menu automates tasks such as turning cameras on and off.

The platform can work with both third-party drones and systems made by Xtend itself. The company’s most advanced unmanned aircraft, Honey Badger, can cover more than four miles per flight at a speed of up to 44 miles per hour. It’s equipped with zoom lens and four infrared sensors.

Xtend also sells a number of smaller drones with different sensor arrays. The company’s most compact system, the Extender, weighs under three pounds and has a top speed of eight miles per hour.

The company says its drones are optimized to operate under challenging flight conditions. They feature protective elements designed to shield the propellers from damage. Additionally, the company’s drones can wirelessly share data with one another using a mesh networking module

Xtend will use its newly raised capital to grow its drone manufacturing capacity. Last month, the company inaugurated a new factory in Florida that will make unmanned aerial systems for the U.S. Defense Department. Down the road, Xtend will upgrade the facility to make upstream drone components such as communication modules and motors.

After its Series B round’s first close last year, the company disclosed that it had won more than $50 million worth of contracts. Xtend’s customer base includes more than 50 organizations in the U.S., Israel, Singapore and Europe. The company says that those customers have deployed thousands of its systems to date.

Xtend is the latest in a series of defense technology startups to have secured funding since the start of the year. Mach Industries Inc., which makes a jet-powered drone called Viper, raised $100 million from investors last month. Two weeks earlier, Anduril Industries Inc. closed a $2.5 billion funding round that valued it at $30.5 billion. 

Image: Xtend

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