MMC in $5.7m round for Sky-Futures

Supplying the remaining $4.2m, Bristow is a Texas-headquartered group that provides helicopter-related services to energy clients across the globe.

Following its investment in Sky-Futures, both corporates will set up a partnership to grow within the unmanned aerial vehicle inspection segment worldwide.

As part of that plan, Sky-Futures will invest to speed up the launch of its automated technology platform, which allows drone operators to monitor the data harvested by the devices on potential anomalies in oil and gas rigs.

Previous funding
The round, bringing the total funds raised by Sky-Futures to more than $10m, comes less than a year after MMC invested an initial £2.5m into the company.

Announced in May 2015, the series-A came on the back of two seed injections into the business from entrepreneurs Nick Robertson and Jon Kamaluddin. At the time, the round was thought to be the largest ever seen in the drone technology segment.

Also in May 2015, US drone operator Airware chose Sky-Futures as one of the companies to be backed by a newly launched drone-focused fund, which will write $250,000-1m tickets for companies in the segment.

Company
Established in 2009, Sky-Futures provides drone-related inspection services to the oil and gas industries. The company's drones gather video, still and thermal imagery data that is later processed and provided to 30 clients including Shell, Statoil, Apache and BG Group. Headquartered in London, the business is active across 10 countries worldwide through offices in Aberdeen, Houston and Kuala Lumpur.

People
MMC Ventures – Simon Menashy (investment director).
Bristow Group – Jonathan Baliff (CEO).
Sky-Futures – James Harrison (co-founder, CEO).

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