With $30M in Tank, UAV Maker 3D Robotics Gets Ready for Take-Off

(Courtesy 3D Robotics)

After raising $30 million in a Series B round of venture funding announced last week, 3D Robotics is ready to really get its drone business off the ground.

The four-year-old startup, based in San Diego (headquarters and engineering), Berkeley, CA, (business and sales), and Tijuana (manufacturing), designs and manufactures aircraft that use open source software for autonomous flight. After moving into a new manufacturing facility in Tijuana, CEO Chris Anderson says 3D Robotics is entering a new era of commercialization for a company that was previously focused on hobbyists.

The Boulder, CO-based Foundry Group (a new investor) co-led the round with existing investor True Ventures. Foundry partner Jason Mendelson is joining 3D Robotics’ board of directors. Existing investors O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and SK Ventures also joined in the new round, which brings the company’s total venture funding to $36 million, according to Anderson.

“We think that robots have already taken over the world,” Foundry’s Mendelson wrote in a recent e-mail. The venture firm also has invested in two Boulder-based robotics startups that are more focused on having fun than doing work: Orbotix, which has developed a robotic ball that can be controlled by Android or iOS-based smartphones and tablets; and Modular Robotics, a spinout from Carnegie Mellon University that makes modular robotic construction blocks for kids.

3D Robotics Y6 multicopter (Credit: 3D Robotics)
3D Robotics Y6 multicopter (Credit: 3D Robotics)

3D Robotics, on the other hand, has been shifting its focus to developing new commercial markets for working robots. “We’ve been studying the UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] market for a while and we feel that 3DR is the unquestioned leader in the UAV space and that UAVs are ready to do real work,” Mendelson says. “The technology and community they’ve created is incredibly impressive.”

And “Yes,” Mendelson adds, “I’ll be coming to San Diego more. Looking forward to it!”

When Chris Anderson resigned last November as the editor of Wired magazine to take the helm at 3D Robotics, the company was focused mostly on serving a community of DIY enthusiasts that has grown to

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.