Spexi Secures $11.5M to Revolutionize Drone Imagery and Data Solutions

Spexi, a Canadian leading drone imagery company, has just closed a Series A funding round of $11.5 million, led by Blockchange Ventures. This financing will enable Spexi to expand its network of drone pilots and enhance its ability to deliver ultra-high-resolution, data-rich imagery to the public and private sectors.

Sources that utilize traditional Earth imagery from satellites and airplanes produce lower resolutions images and cost much more to purchase. Compared to satellite imagery, the drone network offered by Spexi delivers 900 times greater detail at significantly less expense. The improvement in such imaging capabilities has been transforming industries related to real-time high-quality data used for evacuation planning, monitoring of floods, and the prevention of wildfires.

Since securing seed funding in late 2022, Spexi has made significant strides, completing 50,000 drone missions and covering over 1.2 million acres in 140 cities across four countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Spexi’s innovative “Fly to Earn” blockchain-based platform incentivizes over 5,000 drone pilots to capture ultra-high-resolution images, creating a new way to gather data for industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), insurance, and urban planning.

Spexi’s extensive dataset, containing 3.7 million high-resolution images, is becoming an essential resource for training AI systems and powering emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) gaming. The higher the resolution of the imagery, the more accurate the AI solutions become, making Spexi’s data invaluable for advancing smart infrastructure and environmental monitoring efforts.

Bill Lakeland, Spexi’s CEO, commented on the rapid growth of the company and the minimal environmental impact that high-quality data can provide. “We are not only supporting critical government and emergency response services at a fraction of the traditional cost, but we are also playing a key role in the future of AI and metaverse technologies worldwide,” he said.

According to managing partner at Blockchange Ventures Ken Seiff, the value of Spexi is the one that will transform the image industry by pairing high-quality imagery from drones with blockchain, which ensures the integrity of images. “Spexi is not only replacement for satellite imagery; instead, it creates entirely new possibilities in markets such as geospatial data, insurance, AI, public safety, government and gaming,” said Seiff.

The company, with the new investment, aims to scale its operations and continue disrupting traditional Earth imagery industries while providing unparalleled data quality to previously unexplored markets.

About spexi

Spexi is a drone technology company that has transformed the landscape of aerial imagery by making it possible to have a scalable ultra-high-resolution drone network. Founded in 2017, the company uses aerial photography expertise and state-of-the-art drone software to allow businesses and governments to capture high-resolution Earth imagery in support of emergency response, infrastructure inspection, and smart city planning.

The Spexi platform utilizes lightweight consumer drones and its proprietary Spexi Network, which harmonizes and automates imagery collection using an intuitive mobile application. Spexi uses innovative Spexigon technology which breaks up regions into zones divided into hexagons to increase efficiency and detail in mapping out the regions. With integrated AI and computer vision, Spexi offers actionable industry insights from logistics to AR.