Airware (incorporated as Unmanned Innovation, Inc.) was an American venture-funded startup that provided commercial

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...

s for enterprises. The company ceased operations on September 14, 2018. Airware was founded in 2011 in Newport Beach, California, by Jonathan Downey. The company relocated to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in January 2014. The company produced enterprise drones which combine hardware, on-aircraft and mobile software, and

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

services. Downey has stated the company is focused on building systems for drones for commercial uses, including

anti-poaching Anti-poaching is the organised act to counter the poaching of wildlife. However, it is generally used to describe an overall effort against the illegal wildlife trade. The act of anti-poaching is normally carried out by national parks on public l ...

efforts, infrastructure inspections, and

precision agriculture Precision agriculture (PA) is a farming management strategy based on observing, measuring and responding to temporal and spatial variability to improve agricultural production sustainability. It is used in both crop and livestock production. ...

History

Airware was founded by Downey in 2011 out of a frustration with the "inflexible and costly" autopilot systems for unmanned aircraft. Airware was incubated at both Lemnos Labs and

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

. In March 2016, the company announced a $30 million Series C round of financing led by Next World Capital with Andreessen Horowitz,

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

and

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

executive chairman John T. Chambers. Andreessen Horowitz partner

Martin Casado Martín Casado is a Spanish-born American software engineer, entrepreneur, and investor. He is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and was a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. Early life and educati ...

, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner

Mike Abbott Mike Abbott is the Executive Vice President, Software for General Motors. He was formerly the vice president of Apple's Cloud Services team. He also previously worked as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, vice president of en ...

, and John T. Chambers are members of the company's board. In 2015, Airware launched a new venture fund for commercial drones to support "scaling the use of drones across a variety of commercial applications." Airware purchased Redbird, a drone analytics software company, in 2016. On September 14, 2018, Airware announced it was ceasing operations effective immediately.

Products and services

Airware offered

enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterprise ...

drone services combining hardware, on-aircraft and mobile software, and cloud services for industries like mining, insurance, and construction. Airware offered navigation software for drones, table software to guide and monitors drones in flight, and cloud services to store and manage the information gathered by drones. Where most software is designed for specific models of drones, Airware was developing a platform that enables compatibility across aircraft. The company previously collaborated with commercial drone manufacturers to integrate its autopilot hardware and software, then consulted directly with enterprise clients to identify solutions and to ensure regulatory compliance.

References

External links

Official website
Aerospace companies of the United States Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area 2011 establishments in California Companies established in 2011 Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers

History

Products and services

References

Further reading

External links