Wingcopter completes $22 million Series A funding round and announces serial production of its drone technology

Wing­copter has secured $22 mil­lion in Series A fund­ing, which will be used to strength­en its posi­tion in the drone-based logis­tics mar­ket and focus on health­care-relat­ed appli­ca­tions — includ­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of COVID-19 vac­cines.

This financ­ing round was led by Sil­i­con Val­ley-based Xplor­er Cap­i­tal, a key investor in autonomous tech­nolo­gies, and Futu­ry Regio Growth Fund, a Ger­many-based growth cap­i­tal fund focus­ing on invest­ments in glob­al­ly scal­able busi­ness mod­els. In addi­tion, Futu­ry Ven­tures and Hes­sen Kap­i­tal III also par­tic­i­pat­ed. 

A por­tion of the new cap­i­tal will be allo­cat­ed to set­ting up a par­tial­ly auto­mat­ed ser­i­al pro­duc­tion at Wingcopter’s new head­quar­ters in Weit­er­stadt, Ger­many. The 77,500 sq.ft. site is already home to more than 100 employ­ees and will allow a swift ramp up to mass pro­duc­tion in order to meet grow­ing glob­al demand.

Tom Plüm­mer, CEO of Wing­copter, said: “Our team is dri­ven by tack­ling the world’s chal­lenges through scal­able inno­va­tions. This chap­ter of our jour­ney is ded­i­cat­ed to set­ting up logis­ti­cal high­ways in the sky that leapfrog tra­di­tion­al means of trans­porta­tion.

“Poor infra­struc­ture has always been a bar­ri­er, espe­cial­ly for health­care pro­vi­sion, impact­ing bil­lions of lives — a sit­u­a­tion fur­ther exac­er­bat­ed by COVID-19. With the sup­port and pow­er­ful net­works of our investors we are tak­ing a huge step clos­er to ful­fill­ing our vision of cre­at­ing effi­cient and sus­tain­able drone solu­tions that improve and save lives every­where.”

In Malawi, Wing­copter recent­ly start­ed a long-term COVID-19 response project named Drone + Data Aid to improve health­care sup­ply chains togeth­er with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (BMZ).

As part of the under­tak­ing, Wing­copter has part­nered with UNICEF’S African Drone and Data Acad­e­my to train local youth in drone oper­a­tions, from mis­sion plan­ning to pilot­ing beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) deliv­ery and sur­vey­ing flights.

Jonathan McQueen, Co-Founder and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Xplor­er Cap­i­tal, said: “We have been impressed with the Wing­copter team and the speed at which they have devel­oped the prod­uct and built the com­pa­ny. We look for­ward to watch­ing and sup­port­ing them as they help to deliv­er vac­cines in the near-term, and to deliv­er freight in a more sus­tain­able way over the long-term.”

Wing­copter’s cur­rent drone mod­el, the Wing­copter 178 Heavy Lift, pro­vides both one- and two-way deliv­ery, cov­er­ing dis­tances of up to 120km. It can accu­rate­ly low­er a pack­age through a winch mech­a­nism, or land at the point of des­ti­na­tion and return to its ori­gin with a new pay­load.

The com­pa­ny is also press­ing ahead to launch the next gen­er­a­tion of its air­craft, which it says is a game-chang­ing deliv­ery drone with unmatched tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Pre-orders are already being tak­en.

In addi­tion to sell­ing drones, Wing­copter is to rapid­ly expand its drone-deliv­ery-as-a-ser­vice offer­ings. These ser­vices enable its cus­tomers to ben­e­fit from the com­pa­ny’s flight oper­a­tions track record on five con­ti­nents with­out hav­ing to own and main­tain a fleet of drones, hire and train pilots, or run oper­a­tions them­selves.

Wing­copter plans to fur­ther grow its work­force in the fields of flight test­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, pro­duc­tion — includ­ing a new U.S. facil­i­ty — and soft­ware devel­op­ment, specif­i­cal­ly focused on ground and flight con­trol soft­ware, embed­ded sys­tems, soft­ware archi­tec­ture, and cloud infra­struc­ture.

Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Futu­ry Regio Growth Fund and Futu­ry Ven­tures, Ben­jamin Krah­mer, added: “The Wing­copter team com­bines entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it with supe­ri­or tech­nol­o­gy know-how and looks back on an impres­sive num­ber of world­wide drone projects. This is what it takes to con­quer a rapid­ly grow­ing mar­ket such as the inter­na­tion­al drone mar­ket.

“We are excit­ed to sup­port Wing­copter on its flight towards becom­ing a glob­al leader in the inter­na­tion­al drone busi­ness and look for­ward to work­ing togeth­er with the team and founders.”