Backed by Schmidt Futures, Cloudline raises $6M to take aerial autonomy green and mainstream
Summary
Other backers include pan-African funds such as the Raba Partnership, Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, 4Di and other venture firms.When Cloudline founder and CEO Spencer Horne started the company six years ago, he intended to build a transport system connecting isolated communities to the global supply chain with deliveries of large payloads using lighter-than-air uncrewed aerial vehicles.Hornes interest in this moonshot project stemmed from his childhood fascination with trains and a broader passion for transportation technology, especially aviation, influenced by growing up near a railway crossing in South Africa and despite facing challenges pursuing aeronautical studies in the U.S., Horne, a Harvard alum, returned to the continent to contribute to the field.Horne spent two years at McKinsey to establish his professional network, which afforded him valuable travel experiences and insights into the diverse challenges African communities face. After spending time learning about the market and tech, Horne founded Cloudline in 2019 at the intersection of technology, transportation and its implications on community outcomes.Horne, in an interview with TechCrunch, said he wondered why these drone operators were involved with small single-dose deliveries or only delivered medical payloads. According to the CEO, this realization has unveiled a robust opportunity for the startup to extend the use of its platform into these applications.Cloudline has created autonomous airships that provide a cost-efficient alternative to drones, helicopters and satellites, bringing real-time data capture to locations that are the hardest to reach and the most expensive to serve. Both resources give Cloudline an advantage over alternative crafts as partners can increase range without the need for larger aircraft or higher unit operating costs like fuel, addressing monitoring challenges that were previously difficult to solve.So its quite a breakthrough in that sense. According to him, Cloudline has seen revenue increase 4x during 2023, and the startup is projecting substantial growth for 2024, propelled by several new multi-million dollar enterprise contracts.George Rzepecki, founder and CEO of Raba Partnership, speaking on the investment, said his firm was excited to back Horne, who has assembled some of the worlds top engineering and product talent, building a category-leading company in the autonomous aerial infrastructure space.