Accel, China's DJI launch $10m drone fund

The so-called SkyFund - which comprises equal contributions of $5 million from Accel and DJI - claims to be the first-of-its-kind and will target robotics and machine intelligence, software, computer vision and navigation, multimedia communities and tools, and services. Investments will start from around $250,000 per start-up.

In particular, the fund will look to back entrepreneurs and developers building on the DJI software development kit (SDK) to create industry-specific software applications for mapping, imaging, agriculture, and inspection, among others.

In addition to capital, the start-ups will receive product and technical resources from DJI, access to preferred demos and beta programs, co-branding opportunities and go-to-market support to help entrepreneurs get their concepts off the ground, a statement said. Accel, meanwhile, will leverage its experience with its current and past portfolio companies to support best practices in building a developer community.

Accel invested $75 million in DJI earlier this month, valuing the company at $8 billion. Set up in 2006 and headquartered in Shenzhen, DJI develops aerial robotics technology for commercial and recreational use. The drone that crashed on to the lawn of the White House while being piloted by an inebriated US government employee in January was a DJI model. As a result, the company introduced firmware preventing entry into the Washington DC no-fly zone.

DJI's products are used by customers in more than 100 countries for applications including film, construction, inspection, nature conservation, firefighting, and agriculture. The funding from Accel will be used to accelerate adoption of DJI's products and extend its reach into new industrial applications.

"DJI is fast becoming the aerial platform of choice thanks to the company's forward-thinking and premium products, easy-to-use flight system, quality construction and modularity," said Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel.

"We've been fortunate to help seed many preeminent developer communities with companies like Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Dropbox, Facebook, and many others. We believe DJI has the potential to become the next great platform opportunity to drive innovation in dozens of industries."

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• Topics
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• Greater China
• Technology
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• Accel Partners
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