Robot Guard Dogs Help Asylon a series B | Techcrunch

Philadelphia-based robotics company Asylon On Tuesday it announced that it collected a series B of $ 26 million under the leadership of Insight Partners, with the participation of Veteran Ventures Capital, Allegion Ventures and the Gopa Fund.

Asylon started as a drone company for securing facilities. It is best known for a drone with a robot arm that can change its own batteries.

But it also has a robot -like dog service called Dronedog. Asylon takes the famous Boston Dynamics Robot Dog Spot and changes it for waiting work and to integrate with his command-and-control Guardian software. Asylon offers the drones, dogs and software as its robot-like security-as-a-service (RAAS).

A site can be protected with ground patrols via roboths and flying cameras that cover more areas than stationary cameras. Dronedogs can be sent to places unsafe For people or real dogs. And they can perform almost dogs sniffing tasks, such as detecting gas leaks or dangerous chemicals.

The company, which was founded in 2015, did not collect much risk capital for this compared to other drone and robotics companies. It has previously collected around $ 21 million, plus some government subsidies, which yield the total to around $ 45 million, Damon Henry, CEO of the founder, told Techcrunch.

While Henry Fundraising described, after the killing of Brian Thompson of the UnitedHealthcare in December, companies increased the expenditure at CEO home and facility security, Like Dronedog. The RAAs can cost around $ 100,000 to $ 150,000 a year – comparable to hiring a human bodyguard service.

“I went to an event last summer, a New York Tech Week event, and I happened to meet every investor who is on that event in De Ronde,” said Henry. When he decided to pick up, he already had warm intros with investors who were aware that the permanent spending will rise.

Henry and his two fellow founders, Adam Mohamed (CTO) and Brent McLaughlin (COO), were dormitors at MIT. But unlike the classic story of Silicon Valley, they didn’t stop. They went to work as spacecraft engineers after graduating for companies such as Geviation, Boeing and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

In 2015, the three friends saw Amazon announced his drone delivery service and were inspired. They stopped their jobs and founded Asylon. By 2019 they had their first customer: Ford.

And in 2021 the startup almost suffered a quick death. Ford had agreed to make them do a live demo event that shows how their drones worked in the facility. A group of Fortune 500 had registered to see the demo, Henry remembered.

The night before the event, the drone crashed and was destroyed. Henry saw his company flash before his eyes: a destroyed reputation. No customers. The end.

A dedicated employee drove all night to deliver another drone, but the founders had little time to make it run. Miraculously they did that, and it worked flawlessly during the event.

“The system flew consistently, perfectly all day long,” he said. “It won our next three customers -Fortune 500 customers. And then the same day at the same time we actually won our first DOD contract for the drones.”

The founders have since been carefully growing the company. Asylon now employs 65 and has systems that are used in 15 states, he said.