Skyports Raises “Over USD110 Million in Series C Investment Round”

Sky­ports, a leader in own­ing and fly­ing elec­tric drones as well as oper­at­ing ver­ti­ports, announced today that ACS Group, one of the world’s fore­most infra­struc­ture and con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, has made a sub­stan­tial equi­ty invest­ment in the com­pa­ny dur­ing a Series C Invest­ment Round, to become Sky­ports largest investor, reports a press release.

ACS Group, which gen­er­at­ed rev­enue of USD39 bil­lion last year, has invest­ed via its whol­ly owned infra­struc­ture development/concessions busi­ness, Irid­i­um Con­ce­siones de Infraestruc­turas, a com­pa­ny focused on sus­tain­able and inno­v­a­tive trans­porta­tion solu­tions.  

The release explains, “The cap­i­tal will sup­port key devel­op­ments on both sides of Sky­ports’ busi­ness. Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, which ear­li­er this year announced the sign­ing of a tri­par­tite agree­ment with the Roads and Trans­port Author­i­ty of Dubai (RTA) and Joby Avi­a­tion, will use the fund­ing to build out its ver­ti­ports ahead of the launch of air taxi ser­vices in Dubai by 2026 and con­tin­ue to progress oth­er mar­kets.”

Mean­while, Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices will con­tin­ue to build on its exist­ing ser­vices, includ­ing recent­ly launched off­shore ener­gy asset deliv­er­ies, med­ical deliv­er­ies, lin­ear asset inspec­tions and water qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices.

Con­ceived Ver­ti­port for Dubai (graph­ic image)

Dun­can Walk­er, co-Founder and CEO of Sky­ports, com­ment­ed, “With ACS back­ing, we are in the best pos­si­ble posi­tion to advance com­mer­cial air taxi and elec­tric drone ser­vices around the world. This sub­stan­tial invest­ment serves as an endorse­ment of Sky­ports’ ini­tia­tives and under­scores the immense poten­tial of the mar­ket.”

Notable projects in ACS INFRA’s port­fo­lio include the Auto­mat­ed Peo­ple Mover train at Los Ange­les Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and an exten­sion to the met­ro­pol­i­tan rail­way in Lima, Peru. The two com­pa­nies will also explore how drone deliv­ery and inspec­tion ser­vices can be incor­po­rat­ed into ACS Group’s sub­stan­tial port­fo­lio of infra­struc­ture assets and con­struc­tion and min­ing projects. 

The invest­ment will see Irid­i­um CEO, Nuria Halti­wanger, join the Sky­ports Board of Direc­tors as Chair along with top man­age­ment, Ramon Vil­laamil and Vicente Maraña, also join­ing the Board.

Halti­wanger remarked, “We are eager to bring our knowl­edge of large-scale infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion to help grow Sky­ports and the over­all Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket. We are look­ing at how Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices’ exper­tise can help us bring fur­ther effi­cien­cies to our exist­ing asset man­age­ment, con­struc­tion and min­ing busi­ness­es in the Group.” 

He added, “There­fore, this invest­ment is a crit­i­cal step in our strat­e­gy of fur­ther expan­sion in new gen­er­a­tion infra­struc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty.”

In addi­tion to the new cap­i­tal invest­ed by ACS, exist­ing share­hold­er, Paris-based air­port oper­a­tor Groupe ADP, will invest addi­tion­al cap­i­tal in Sky­ports’ Series C fund­ing round. 

Sky­ports Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pyka to Launch Heavy Pay­load Oper­a­tions (Jan­u­ary 2023)

Groupe ADP and Sky­ports first part­nered dur­ing the Series A fund­ing in 2019. Since then, the two com­pa­nies have col­lab­o­rat­ed on infra­struc­ture projects with the aim of advanc­ing the devel­op­ment of ver­ti­port tech­nol­o­gy and oper­a­tions, includ­ing the first Euro­pean ver­ti­port test­bed in Paris, inau­gu­rat­ed in Novem­ber 2022.  

The Series C Invest­ment is the lat­est in a series of announce­ments that demon­strates Sky­ports’ lead­ing mar­ket posi­tion. The com­pa­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly secured fund­ing from com­pa­nies across the avi­a­tion and infra­struc­ture space includ­ing Ire­landia Avi­a­tion, Kane­mat­su and Deutsche Bahn Dig­i­tal Ven­tures. 

Sky­ports Infrastructure’s strate­gic part­ners include Archer, Beta, Joby Avi­a­tion, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Volo­copter.  Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices works with world-renowned organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing the UK Nation­al Health Ser­vice, Equinor, UPS, Roy­al Mail, Wil­helm­sen, and the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey. 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportsdroneservices.com

https://www.grupoacs.com/home/

(Images: Sky­ports)

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