Robotic inspection outfit Aerones secures US$62M in oversubscribed financing round

The funding round was led by new investors Activate Capital and S2G, with participation from Carbon Equity and Overlap Holdings, and existing investors Lightrock, Blume Equity, Metaplanet, Change Ventures and Extantia.

Aerones said the funding will be used to expand globally, boost R&D in AI and robotics, scale manufacturing, and enhance predictive maintenance for the wind industry. The funding round follows a record-breaking year for Aerones, marked by a near tripling of its revenue, significant operational expansion, and the opening of a new US hub in Dallas, Texas. The company said the funding round was significantly oversubscribed. It follows on from a €4.0M (US$4.6M) grant secured by the company from the EU Innovation Fund in 2024 and a US$30M funding round in 2023.

“Our mission is to automate wind turbine inspection and maintenance globally,” said Aerones chief executive and cofounder Dainis Kruze. “The world cannot meet its renewable energy goals without innovation and there aren’t enough qualified technicians to keep up with the growth of this industry. With this new investment, we’re expanding faster than ever to meet the urgent demand for intelligent, robot-enabled and AI-powered solutions.”

The company plans to scale up its robot manufacturing capabilities and invest in advanced predictive maintenance tools, leveraging data from thousands of robotic inspections. These initiatives will enable Aerones to accelerate preventive maintenance in the wind industry.

In 2020, Aerones won a competition to demonstrate remote blade maintenance techniques for offshore windfarms to one of the industry’s leading turbine manufacturers. The competition was part of a competition launched by GE Renewable Energy, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and KTN, which called for robotics solutions that could automate maintenance activity and reduce unplanned offshore activity.