Montana drone company Skyfish secures $20M in seed funding, plans to double workforce in the next year
Skyfish’s M4 model drone can autonomously scan critical infrastructure such as towers, bridges, powerlines, and wind turbines for inspection and engineering analysis. Photo via Skyfish.
August 4, 2021
By Martina Pansze
Autonomous work drone company Skyfish, based in Stevensville, Montana, announced June 25 that it raised $20 million in a Series Seed funding round led by Tampa, FL’s Bayshore Capital and SBA Communications director Steven Bernstein based in Boca Raton, FL.
Skyfish specializes in autonomous drones that can inspect and create “engineering grade” 3D models of critical infrastructure such as towers, bridges, powerlines, and wind turbines.
The company partners with Sony to gather high-definition optical data and analyzes the images through a process called photogrammetry. Photogrammetry correlates, triangulates, warps, and stitches the metadata of thousands of photos algorithmically into a precise “digital twin” model. Skyfish allows users to upload their drone data to a web based processing, visualization, and analysis system called Skyportal. Skyfish developed Skyportal to make the entire process from scanning to analysis easy.
“The secret sauce in our technology revolves around transforming photos and meta-data into these amazing 3D models that we house in Skyportal. The user can fly around in the model and measure objects down to a 32nd of an inch. It's similar to a video game” said Skyfish CEO Dr. Orest Pilskalns.
An engineer doesn't need a climber to scale a tower, place a tape measure on an object, and take a picture. With Skyfish technology the engineer can simply use her web browser to log into Skyfish’s Skyportal to see the data. In Skyportal, all of the scanned structures are available for analysis. With a few clicks of the mouse the user can view a complete computer-aided drawing (CAD) of the drone scanned infrastructure. If an engineer needs to place a new antenna on an existing tower mount, they can use Skyfish to structurally analyze the mount to see if it’s capable of supporting the antenna. Skyfish interfaces with structural analysis tools such as Risa and Bentley Systems.
The seed funding is allotted to improve drone manufacturing capacity and expand the company’s existing talent pool. In fact, Skyfish is set to double its 30-person workforce in the next year by hiring assemblers, engineers, pilots, and machine vision experts.
Skyfish designs, manufactures, and tests all drones at their Stevensville headquarters 30 miles south of Missoula.
“It's amazing where you can find talent,” said Pilskalns. “We placed a few radio ads just to let people know we're here. In addition we utilize Craigslist and Indeed. We're finding amazing software, electrical and mechanical engineering talent right here in Montana.”
The Skyfish program uses a process called photogrammetry to render image data into a digital 3D model that is accurate to 1/32 of an inch. Photo via Skyfish.
After spending nearly 6 years in R&D "stealth mode," Skyfish launched its drone platform in January 2021. The platform includes Skyfish M4 and M6 enterprise-grade drones. The M4 model creates a replica of critical infrastructure, otherwise known as a 3D reality model, while the M6 is designed for heavier loads (up to 15lbs.) and robotic payloads such as aerial ignition systems.
Pilskalns founded Skyfish in 2014 after working with the National Imaging and Mapping Agency (since renamed to the Geospatial Intelligence Agency). Pilskalns grew up in Montana and attended the University of Montana for Mathematics and Physics, returning for a master's in Computer Science with an emphasis in machine learning. He later earned a PhD in Computer Science at Washington State University, where he then taught software development for almost a decade.
After the U.S. banned Chinese drones from military and government agency operations in 2019 due to security concerns, Skyfish hopes their full-stack solution can fill the gap. The next step for the product’s evolution, said Pilskalns, is to develop a system that can autonomously scan infrastructure in environments laden with the cables and vegetation--basically any obstacle that’s tough to detect with current sensor technology. In addition, Skyfish is developing machine learning algorithms to transform reality models into idealized CAD-like drawings that help generate engineering recommendations and reports.
Chairman and Founder of SBA Communications Steven Bernstein will join the Skyfish board of directors to offer expertise in addition to financial support. SBA Communications is a real estate investment trust that operates wireless infrastructure and is one of the largest cell tower companies in North America.
“After speaking with Skyfish customers, we quickly understood that Skyfish is unique in the commercial drone world, producing precise, engineering-grade drone enabled photogrammetry and 3D models of infrastructure,” said Bernstein in a press release. “These are the best cell tower digital-twin models I’ve seen and could significantly enhance the cell tower industry’s inspection, measurement and mount mapping processes.”
Pilskalns said that Bernstein’s new position on the board will bring a breadth of tower industry knowledge to Skyfish’s strategy and will situate the company for continued growth.
About the Publisher: Launched in 2014, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance is an nonpartisan nonprofit association of highly-engaged high tech and manufacturing companies and affiliates creating high-paying jobs in Montana. For more information, visit MTHighTech.org or subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.
About the Author: Martina Pansze is the former Communications Director for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. She graduated from Whitman College in 2018 with a degree in Film and Media Studies.