Segment Focus by the Top Drone Investors

In which drone segments do the leading investors put their money? What is clear is that hardware segment receives more funding by top drone investors in comparison with other segments.

Hardware received a substantially large share of total investment (around 70%) from all investors worldwide.

Drone service companies come in second place with around 17%, followed by software companies with roughly 14% of total investment. It is worth mentioning that these percentages are not shown on the infographic. Although the top investors seem more focused on software than services, there is a stronger focus overall on services when we look at the?total?number of investment deals.

The strong preference for hardware is hard to deny. Half of the top drone investors focused more on hardware drone companies than on the others. For instance, the top two investors, Drone Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, dedicated around 60% of their investments to Hardware companies. However, individually there were other investors who focused more on software companies. These include Intel Capital (56%), GGV Capital (56%), and especially Verizon Ventures, who seems to have a special affinity to software investments which make up 71% of their total drone investment portfolio.

Finally, the focus of leading investors was not much on drone service companies. The highest percentage belongs to Y Combinator, which allocated 40% of their investments into service companies. However, this was still secondary to their investment into software (47%). Overall, our?findings regarding drone jobs?confirm the development specifically in Hardware workforce, since this segment posted the highest number of drone jobs in comparison with companies in the service and software segments.