Making oceans safer and saving more lives, drone-based maritime surveillance provider TEKEVER raises €20 million

Providers of drone-based services designed to thwart maritime-based threats, Lisbon’s TEKEVER has raised €20 million in a growth funding round. The funding is slated to be used to further the company’s ongoing research and development programmes and propel global expansion efforts.

The drones you and I might be most familiar with are that of the consumer/entertainment variety. They’re most often used to shoot areal footage, either self-shot, or realised in any one of your favourite streaming entertainment services du jour, or, more recently, to replace fireworks in some dazzling displays of LED acrobatics.

Then, of course, there are those other drones.

TEKEVER definitely falls into the “other” category, but yet, the company is a bit different in its own way.

“Unlike traditional aerospace companies, we have a vertically integrated approach to our products, and full control over every aspect of the value chain, including aeronautical design, composite structures manufacturing, electronics design and production, and software development including deep capability in data science,” explained CEO Ricardo Mendes.

Producing drones that are capable of continuous flight times of up to 20 hours while laden with just about every type of sensor you can think of, camera, radars, mobile communications detectors, you name it, TEKEVER can put it in the air.

Add a healthy dose of Edge AI, Sat Comms, and cloud computing to the mix, and TEKEVER is able to deliver real-time information and advanced analytics to customers web and mobile devices.

What this all adds up to is one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced maritime surveillance systems mankind has ever known. The company points to its ability to deliver, “the intelligence needed to predict and act timely and efficiently to avoid major threats to life, the environment, and the economy in a maritime context, like piracy, drugs, and human trafficking, migrant smuggling, pollution, illegal fishing, and threats to infrastructure security.”

With topics including migrant smuggling and illegal fishing on the menu, it should come as no surprise that the United Kingdom’s Home Office is one of TEKEVER’s clients. The firm also counts the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) amongst this userbase.

The company launched its first commercial services in 2018, and since then has seen nothing but the revenue and profit numbers in the black, with a projected CAGR of at least 60% projected for the next three years.

“We’re leading in Europe, and we’re on our way to becoming the global leaders,” adds Mendes.

TEKEVER is not, however, alone in the remote maritime surveillance space, as French spacetech Unseenlabs is keeping tabs on the shipping lanes, albeit via a network of satellites, and raised a matching €20 million in Series B round last April.

The drone maker’s growth funding round was led by Ventura Capital and joined by Iberis Capital and a number of undisclosed maritime industry and shipping OEMs.

“TEKEVER is one of the hottest European Deeptech scaleups, and we’re very proud to continue working with the team and helping them disrupt the global market,” commented Iberis Capital’s Diogo Chalbert Santos. “It’s amazing what TEKEVER has already achieved as a bootstrapped business and I’d say not even the sky is a limit with this round.”