Orlando. 27 April 2022. TEKEVER, the drone-based maritime surveillance provider in Europe, announced a strategic investment and partnership with Scorpio Investment Holding Ltd, part of the Scorpio group of companies, one of the world’s most storied and established maritime businesses. Scorpio’s investment is part of a 20M Euro round recently raised by TEKEVER, that the company will use to accelerate its global expansion. It represents an important step towards bringing TEKEVER’s innovative technology and services to the Commercial Shipping market.
Sharing the same environmental and security concerns, the two companies have complementary know-how and will together develop space and drone-based services that can contribute towards safer, greener and more efficient operations in the Commercial Shipping and Offshore Wind markets.
“Scorpio has founded and is a significant investor in the largest product tanker company in the world and the largest Wind Turbine Installation Vessel owner.”, said Ricardo Mendes, TEKEVER CEO. “they additionally manage vessels for third parties and are a global ship manager. We are excited to explore the application for our fixed wing drones, near-space communications, and VTOL solutions in the largely untapped market of commercial shipping operations. This builds on TEKEVER’s strong governmental relations and pioneering drone application contracts globally”, he added.
Filippo Lauro, Vice-President of Scorpio, said: “we constantly look for opportunities to improve safety and reduce costs across our fleet and have been examining the application of drone technology for a while. Our partnership with TEKEVER, the world’s foremost safety maritime drone company, ensures this project will accelerate. We look forward to improving outcomes for our crew and customers and harnessing the power of drone technology together.”
David Morant, Scorpio Managing Director, added: “Ricardo Mendes and his team understand the application of drones through their full-stack solution to our business, and the specific demands of the maritime environment. We look forward to working together.”
An unconventional drone company
TEKEVER builds multiple types of drones, capable of flying up to 20 hours continuously while carrying a vast amount of sensors, including cameras, radars or cellphone detectors. The drones are built around an AI-centric platform that combines Edge AI, satellite communications and cloud computing to provide customers with real time information and advanced analytics over simple to use and globally accessible web and mobile interfaces.
“95% of humans live in less than 5% of the Earth’s surface. To thrive as a species, we need to be able to safely discover, know and protect our entire planet, harnessing and using its resources in a responsible way. Our purpose is to offer our customers a service that is simple, effective and hides away the tremendous technical and operational complexity involved in what we’re doing. We’ve developed the entire technology stack and built a scalable industrial capability to create an end-to-end service that just redefines what’s possible in Maritime Surveillance. We’re leading in Europe, and we’re on our way to become the global leaders.” added Mendes.
The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the United Kingdom’s Home Office were among the first governments, major agencies and global companies to adopt TEKEVER’s revolutionary drone-based intelligence service to gather real time data across ultra-wide areas and create the intelligence needed to predict and act timely and efficiently to avoid major threats to life, the environment and the economy in maritime context, like Piracy, Drugs and Human Trafficking, Migrant Smuggling, Pollution, Illegal Fishing, and threats to Infrastructure Security.
Following the commercial launch of its services in 2018, TEKEVER’s revenue and profits have been growing consistently, and the company expects a continued CAGR of at least 60% in the next 3 years. The investment round will contribute to accelerate global expansion and R&D investment, as TEKEVER expects to increase its workforce by 100 during 2022 across multiple geographies to ramp up product development and manufacturing capability and make its revolutionary intelligence-as-a-service available to customers in new geographies.
