Airware (incorporated as Unmanned Innovation, Inc.) was an American

venture Venture may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music *The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 *"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes *''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR Games * ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade gam ...

-funded startup that provided commercial

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

s for enterprises. The company ceased operations on September 14, 2018. Airware was founded in 2011 in

Newport Beach, California Newport Beach is a coastal city of about 85,000 in southern Orange County, California, United States. Located about southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Newport Beach is known for its sandy beaches. The city's harbor once supported maritime indu ...

, by Jonathan Downey. The company relocated to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

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 ...

efforts, infrastructure inspections, and

precision agriculture Precision agriculture (PA) is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated varia ...

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, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

. 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. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

executive chairman

John T. Chambers John Thomas Chambers (born August 23, 1949) is the former executive chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. Early life Chambers was born on August 23, 1949, in Cleveland, Ohio to John Tuner "Jack" and June Chambers. His mother was a psychiatrist and ...

. 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, was a pioneer of software-defined networking, and was a co-founder and the chief technology officer of Nicir ...

, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mike Abbott, 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 * Enterpris ...

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 Electronics companies established in 2011 Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers American companies established in 2011 2018 disestablishments in California American companies disestablished in 2018 Electronics companies disestablished in 2018 Technology companies established in 2011 Technology companies disestablished in 2018 Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers of the United States

History

Products and services

References

Further reading

External links