Well, the drone dollars keep on coming.
On Thursday, Alabama-based drone maker Performance Drone Works (PDW) secured a $35M strategic investment from Ondas Autonomous Systems (OAS), the drone and counter-drone business unit of Boston-based defense tech holding company Ondas Holdings.
Speeding up: PDW was founded in 2018 out of the Drone Racing League (basically drone F1). In 2020, they reincorporated as PDW and made a hard pivot to defense to meet the DoD’s need for speed(y drones).
Since the rebrand, they’ve raised an $8.6M seed round and closed a $16.4M Series A led by Squadra Ventures at a $132M post-money valuation back in March.
Zoom zoom: PDW has two main offerings on the drone front:
- C100 Heavy-Lift Quadcopter: PDW’s flagship product, a medium-range and modular reconnaissance quadcopter with a 10lb payload and a range of about 6-9 miles.
- AM-FPV (Autonomous Micro FPV Drone): A tiny short-range FPV drone built for ISR and strike. It’s super small, super speedy, and easily packable.
Cool kids: Those quadcopters have turned out to be pretty popular with the US military, and PDW has moved fast to meet the ever-growing drone demand.
- Back in August, the company opened a 90,000 sq ft factory in Huntsville, Alabama (conveniently located near the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal) called Drone Factory 01, where the company says it has the capacity to pump out 60,000 FPV drones a year.
- A week later, they won a $20.9M contract under the US Army Transformation in Contact initiative (PDW’s third contract with TiC so far).
- In October, they snagged their first contract with the US Air Force for their C100 Heavy-Lift Quadcopter for an undisclosed amount.
Onda(s) move: That love from the military clearly caught the eye of Ondas Holdings, which has been making a name for itself in the drone space in its own right.
Ondas, through its autonomous systems arm, has won a slew of contracts for its drone and counter-drone tech, including an $8.2M one last week to supply its Iron Drone Raider cUAS system to “one of the largest international airports in Europe.”
They unveiled their $150M VC fund, Ondas Capital, back in September to invest in defense tech companies. PDW is their eighth investment in the past two years, most of which took a controlling stake.
Teaming up: With some new cash from their friends at Ondas, PDW is looking to:
- Scale production and delivery for its C100 and AM-FPV platforms.
- Boost their engineering headcount to expand R&D capabilities.
- Acquire critical components to strengthen their domestic supply chain.
“This investment marks another step forward in accelerating the production of combat robotics necessary to maintain air superiority for America and its allies,” PDW CEO Ryan Gury told Tectonic in a statement. “Ondas has proven to be a market leader in both innovation and investment. This announcement underscores Ondas’ commitment to PDW’s model: operator-led engineering, agile manufacturing, and deployment at scale.”
Doesn’t seem like the drone hype is ending anytime soon.