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Aerones have raised $9 million in seed funding to further accelerate global scaling of robotic wind turbine maintenance and inspection.
Future Positive Capital led the round, along with Change Ventures, an existing investor.
Aerones’ suite of robots allows it to inspect and maintain turbines up six times faster than human workers and up to 40% cheaper than the average person.
Aerones’ robots are safer than traditional inspections and maintenance operations, where humans must rappel down turbines under dangerous weather conditions.
Sofia Hmich, founder and CEO of Future Positive Capital said that Aerones is the first full-stack company in the industry. “As opposed to companies which rely on remote sensing to collect data or focus only on analytics, Aerones automates complex tasks.” Aerones are the only place to go for O&Ms, helping to speed up the scaling-up of renewable energy and reaching Net Zero emissions.
Aerones works with nine of the ten biggest wind companies in the world, including Enel, GE, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa. We have now serviced more than 3000 wind turbines across 17 countries in North and South America and Europe.
Fancisco J. Valle, Wind Innovation Product Owner at Enel Green Power, stressed that only improvements and the introduction disruptive activities can give us the competitive advantages that we need to keep our wind energy business afloat and offer new sustainable solutions. Aerones has agreed to allow us to introduce new innovations that will help develop wind energy.
“We are quickly scaling up our operations in terms robots and service teams in field. Aerones CEO and co-founder Dainis Kraze says that this funding will allow them to grow and prepare for the Series A round later in the year.
Wind energy is a domestic and cost-effective option as the world invests heavily in decarbonisation and sustainability. The global market for wind turbine maintenance and operation is expected to grow by $30 billion as new wind developments accelerate exponentially.
Janis Putrams (co-founder and CTO) said that they are always developing new robotic solutions in order to meet our customers’ needs. “For example, we just released an internal inspection robot which crawls and scans within wind turbine blades. It provides digital twin inspection data with unsurpassed detail and also a cleaning solution that effectively removes dirt and oil from blades and towers.”
