Aerospace startup in South Africa Cloudline It has secured $6 million in funding, as it aims to lead the global frontier in zero-carbon autonomous aviation.
schmidt futures, A philanthropic venture founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt, an investor in the seed round. Other supporters include African funds such as: Raba Partnership, Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, 4Di and other venture companies.
When Cloudline Founder and CEO Spencer Horn He started the company six years ago, intending to build a transportation system that would connect isolated communities to the global supply chain while delivering large payloads using lighter-than-air unmanned aerial vehicles.
Horne’s interest in this pioneering project arose from his childhood fascination with trains and his broader passion for transportation technology, especially aviation, influenced by his upbringing near a railway crossing in South Africa – and despite the challenges he faced in pursuing aviation studies in the United States, Horne, a graduate Harvard University to the continent to contribute to this field.
Horne spent two years at McKinsey establishing his professional network, which provided him with valuable travel experiences and insights into the diverse challenges faced by African communities. Work in East Africa, particularly in Kenya and Uganda, has highlighted the significant impact of infrastructure on people’s lives.
2016 was a pivotal year as the first drone delivery services targeting African consumers in rural areas were underway. Zipline was starting drone deliveries in Rwanda while Matternet was testing it in Lesotho. The following year, Horn founded Cloudline at the intersection of technology, transportation and their impacts on societal outcomes.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Horn said he wonders why drone operators would only engage in small single-dose deliveries or deliver medical payloads. Horn’s view at the time was that there was an opportunity for drones to transport items that could create real economic opportunities for Africans and bypass traditional infrastructure limitations.
“I had my degree in mechanical engineering and I was already leaning toward technology, so I leaned into that and went down the rabbit hole — a little bit,” Horn said. “And I realized that technology doesn’t scale linearly in complexity with size. If you want to make a larger drone, “Sooner rather than later, you will end up with a plane or helicopter again, with all the costs and complications.”
“So the drone players were hanging on to this space because getting out of it was too big a play on hardware. It had become too expensive and too complex. And then I flipped the question around: ‘Drones have done this incredible job because we’ve downsized the size of helicopters and airplanes;’ What if we scaled back something else so we could also do it, like making hardware easier, relying on the power of software and scaling with autonomy to unlock opportunity? That was actually when I landed on the balloons.
Horn and his team invested a great deal of time developing the necessary flight hardware designed for balloons, and only came up with the best player three years ago. Fast forward to today, and the startup, which now employs more than 25 people per LinkedIn, has improved its understanding of the opportunities in the autonomous aviation sector, Horn said in the interview.
For example, the team has found interest and response from partners interested in aerial surveillance, an area that Horne said he initially dismissed as an opportunity due to advances in satellite drone technology and portable DJI. As such, Cloudline has identified specific areas where its application, which provides real-time data over long distances or extended flight times over large areas, meets critical needs. According to the CEO, this realization revealed a strong opportunity for the startup to expand the use of its platform to include these applications.
Airship Cloudline. Image credits: Cloudline
Cloudline has created autonomous balloons that provide a cost-effective alternative to drones, helicopters and satellites, bringing real-time data capture to locations that are difficult to reach and more expensive to service. The main strengths of these airships are their range, endurance and efficiency.
The startup says its balloons can cover more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) with a full payload of 40 kg (90 pounds) and operate for 10 hours, making them ideal for various applications, including mapping, surveillance and public safety.
These zero-carbon balloon flights are Powered by helium gas for lift and sustainable solar energy, Powered by a backup battery, this results in lower emissions and significantly lower running costs. Both sources give Cloudline an advantage over alternative aircraft as partners can increase range without the need for larger aircraft or higher unit operating costs such as fuel, addressing surveillance challenges that were previously difficult to solve.
“So it’s a huge achievement in that sense. The way we now think about this, just as a technology, is that playing on this platform can be a game-changer in many ways. For example, accessing areas that would normally be harder to reach or becoming Its service is incredibly expensive.
“And once we move out of the density of cities, whether that’s suburban or rural or completely remote areas, or now in the growing state where places are exposed to similar natural disasters, this is a platform that is able to bring those places back into reach and within budget,” he said. “Because the key is that they can be built cheaply here in South Africa, and they don’t burn any fuel.”
Cloudline operates in a relatively uncompetitive market due to its focus on hardware. While other drone operators are inside Autonomous air infrastructure space They would pose some competition if they ventured into ballooning, and Horn asserts that Cloudline’s leadership advantage gives the startup a strong position in the market.
According to him, Cloudline’s strongest intellectual property lies in the integration of software with hardware, especially in creating autonomy for the airships. Replicating this time-consuming process in the field is a major challenge for any potential competitor, even with deep pockets, he says. Additionally, he says, the success or failure of drone companies depends not on the functionality of their drones, but on their ability to generate value for customers through a viable business model.
Cloudline’s approach to this challenge is evident in its key strategy of developing solutions in Africa for the continent as its primary customer base and leveraging these use cases to enter the global market. This approach is useful, especially in regulatory interactions, where regulators have shown an openness to collaborating with the Cape Town-based startup despite the innovative nature of its work.
The six-year-old aerospace company It has quickly gained traction among customers such as government organizations looking for a platform capable of carrying various payloads, especially multi-sensor payloads for aerial surveillance. Unlike traditional drone flights that use single sensors for specific types of data, Cloudline says it combines visual, infrared, lidar and other sensor data into a single flight, creating a comprehensive data overlay. Facilities with linear infrastructure, such as power lines, pipelines, railways and roads, can combine sensing for maintenance and security.
“We’re seeing a serious interest from people in nature conservation, whether it’s nature reserves, coastal monitoring or reforestation, who – ironically and often painfully – face the pain point of relying on hydrocarbon-fueled aircraft to do their work,” Horn said. “. “We are now zero emissions, and we will continue to leverage advances in green energy to expand the range and capabilities of our aircraft.”
The startup has launched its commercial operations in South Africa, where it has completed the regulatory approvals process, Horn says. It is also actively expanding into neighboring countries, Namibia and Mozambique, before tackling global markets. Earlier this year, Cloudline conducted test flights for authorities in Kenya, making it the first balloon to fly in East Africa. According to him, Cloudline saw a 4x increase in revenue during 2023, and the startup expects significant growth for 2024, driven by several new enterprise contracts worth millions of dollars.
Speaking about the investment, George Rzebicki, founder and CEO of Raba Partnership, said his company is excited to back Horn, who has “assembled some of the world’s best engineering and product talent and built a leading autonomous air infrastructure company.” “.