On April 29, 2020, CM Venture Capital portfolio company SKYSYS announced the completion of 28 million rmb series A round. This round of investment was led by Ivy Capital. Original investors CM Venture Capital and Light House Capital also participated in the round.
This round of financing will be used to strengthen the “Qiyun” drone integrated operating system, enrich the “Qiyun” based SaaS applications and accelerate the deployment of drone charging management network to provide professional solutions for more intelligent application scenarios and “new infrastructure” projects.
“Qiyun” UAV Integrated Operating System
Skysys is the earliest and most mature supplier of fully automated UAV systems for commercial operations in China. It is deeply involved in the field of UAV empowerment and provides industry users and partners with UAV hangars (airports) and software products based on cloud computing. Up to now, the company has completed angel round, Pre-A and A round financing.
As a leader in this field, Skysys has always been at the forefront of market share. In 2015, the founding team began to explore the technology of automatic piloting and charging of drones to realize L4-L5 level of automation, and empower drones to privde public services by combining “Cloud” and “Airport” infrastructure. In 2016, Skysys released the world’s first multi-layer drone charging hangar, thus creating a fully automated drone market in China. In 2017, Skysys took the lead in applying the drone hangar in smart city management and deployed the world’s largest urban drone dispatch network.
Four generations of drone airports
In 2018, Skysys won the first award of the first “Bloom Cup” national 5G Application Contest, and was rated as the top ten national 5G demonstration applications. At the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the “Tianshu” product was selected in the top three of the AI+Traffic field, and was rated as the best drone autonomous driving system. “Universal charging, grid jump fly, integrated drone operating system, drone enabling system, drone SaaS and many other new concepts were first raised up and practiced by Skysys”, John Wang, founder of Skysys Introduced: “Just like gas stations have promoted the popularity of cars and the ride-hailing applications has activated the productivity of cars, the emergence of drone airports will also activate the productivity of drones in various industries. By reusing infrastructure and scheduling optimization, best operational efficiency can be achieved. “
In 2020, the new infrastructure investment represented by 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and the Internet of Things is accelerating. 5G plus drones have become the highlight of smart industry and smart city applications. According to the “Global Semi-Annual Smart City Spending Guide” released by the Internet Data Center (IDC), global smart city technology-related investments will reach US $ 189.46 billion in 2023, and the Chinese market will reach US $ 38.92 billion. Faced with the billion-dollar blue ocean market, Skysys has cooperated with several 500 fortune companies. The high bandwidth and low latency of 5G have opened up rich application scenarios for drone ariport system. At present, Skysys has implemented the “smart traffic”, “smart fire protection”, industrial inspection scenarios in places as Shanghai, Jiangsu, Yunnan, etc..
Facing the opportunities and challenges under the current Covid-19 pandemic, John said, “The pandemic has accelerated the implementation of artificial intelligence and unmanned systems. The full automation of drones is only the first step for Skysys. The second step is to help customers make money from data collected. Soon after, the new infrastructure for drones will be spread all over the world, providing efficient, fast, and on-demand fully automatic services for a variety of applications. It’s already here! “
Regarding this A-round investment, Jiyi Weng, Ivy Capital founder, said, “Skysys cuts in from the hangar and automatic cruise software in drone ecosystem and provides drone government application software. We are confident with drone airports to complement and extend government’s capabilities in city management. At the same time, we fully agree with the company’s vision to build drone cruise and charging management system and drone operation application software development ecology to promote the convenience and populization of drone applications. “
Talking about the folllowing on investment in a short period of time, Dr. Min Zhou, CEO of CM Venture Capital, said, “CM Venture Capital is the frist angel investor of Skysys, and has witnessed every step of the company’s growth. The team is very pragmatic, diligent and united. With the speeding up of 5G infrastructure investment, I believe that the company will seize the opportunity to grow bigger and stronger. We introduced the first overseas customers to Skysys and will continue to empower the business together with new and current investors. “
Zhe Li, CEO of Light House Capital, said, “As an early investor of Skysys, we witnessed the growth of the company from a proposer of innovative concepts to a supplier and operator of reliable commercial products. The all-weather, fully automated drone ariports from Skysys expands the dimensions, speed and quality of city management, and transforms extensive management into quick response services and refined dataization capabilities. Skysys converts cost into value and tranform drone from fashionable technoogy into a productive tool providing far-reaching significance. We believe that the value of Skysys has just been recognized, and we will continue to support company’s growth. “
In 2020, Skysys will work with software companies, application companies, drone machine manufacturers, and functional load suppliers in the industry to bring fully automated vertical solutions to customers. Skysys will also continue to promote the interoperability of drone airport protocols and interfaces with partners to achieve mutual benefit and maximize the social benefits of new infrastructure construction!
