Israel's Percepto Raises $45 Million for Autonomous Industrial Site Monitoring

Israeli drone company Percepto announced a $45 million Series B round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies. The funding will go toward expanding its autonomous monitoring and inspection platform for industrial sites, which relies on drones that launch on their own from a dedicated base station in the field.

A massive round for a company that flies without a pilot on site

Percepto, which develops drone-in-a-box systems for monitoring critical infrastructure facilities, closed a $45 million funding round this week. It's one of the largest rounds ever recorded for an Israeli drone company, a figure that shows just how seriously foreign investors are starting to take autonomous industrial monitoring, not just aerial photography and entertainment applications.

The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, which was joined by new investors alongside veteran backers already involved with the company.

• Round leader: Koch Disruptive Technologies
• New investors: State of Mind Ventures, Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments, Delek-US
• Existing investors participating: U.S. Venture Partners, Spider Capital, Arkin Holdings
• Round size: $45 million
• Announcement date: November 2020

How exactly does Percepto's monitoring system work?

Percepto's core idea is to eliminate the need for human presence on site. The drone sits in a dedicated enclosure inside the industrial facility, takes off according to pre-scheduled missions, and captures video and images that are automatically sent to the cloud. There, computer vision algorithms scan the footage looking for signs of malfunctions.

• Leaks in industrial equipment
• Structural damage to the facility
• Safety hazards on site

The company, founded in 2014 by Dor Abuhasira, Sagi Blonder, Raviv Raz, and Ariel Avitan, positions itself as an alternative to manual field inspections or expensive, logistically complex helicopter patrols. Potential customers include power utilities, oil and gas facilities, and other industrial infrastructure operators that need regular inspections of large and hazardous areas.

Growing competition in autonomous monitoring

The interesting question is how ready this market actually is for wide-scale adoption. Infrastructure companies tend to be conservative and slow to adopt new technology, especially when it comes to critical facilities like power grids and oil installations. Regulation around autonomous drone flights, including permits for beyond visual line of sight flying, also remains inconsistent between countries, forcing Percepto to navigate different aviation authorities in every market it enters.

Still, the entry of a fund the size of Koch Disruptive Technologies, the investment arm of the giant American industrial conglomerate Koch Industries, signals confidence from a strategic investor with deep knowledge of heavy industry. It's an unusual seal of approval for a relatively small Israeli company trying to break into an inherently conservative market.

It's hard not to be impressed by the ability of four Israeli entrepreneurs to build a platform from scratch that manages to attract American industrial funds of this scale, in a field still considered relatively niche in Israel.