The world’s largest drone maker is quickly becoming one of China’s most powerful homegrown companies. DJI announced today that it has raised another $75 million in venture capital funding, and recent talks with investors have reportedly pegged the value of the company at a whopping $10 billion.
The Verge reports that this latest infusion of cash comes from Accel Partners, a Silicon Valley firm that’s well known for its early investments in companies such as Facebook and Dropbox.
DJI says it’s on track to double sales this year and generate around $1 billion in revenue from drone sales around the world. Not bad for a company that was founded in 2006 by then-26-year-old engineer Frank Wang, who has now become the world’s first drone billionaire (he owns about 45% of the company).
DJI founder Frank Wang
The company is also planning to branch out from the aerial photography and video markets that it now dominates, expanding to “filmmaking, agriculture, conservation, search and rescue, energy infrastructure, mapping, and more,” says Wang. In addition to hardware, DJI may be planning to focus on software as well in order to dominate the entire drone ecosystem with its products and services.
(via The Verge via Resource Mag)
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.