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Drone Startup Airware Is Shutting Down After Raising $118 Million (techcrunch.com)
Drone operating system startup Airware, which has appeared in a number of stories over the years, announced today that it will be shutting down immediately despite having raised $118 million from investors. " The startup ran out of money after trying to manufacture its own hardware that couldn't compete with drone giants like China's DJI," reports TechCrunch. "The company at one point had as many as 140 employees, all of which are now out of a job." From the report: Founded in 2011 by Jonathan Downey, the son of two pilots, Airware first built an autopilot system for programming drones to follow certain routes to collect data. It could help businesses check rooftops for damage, see how much of a raw material was coming out of a mine, or build constantly-updated maps of construction sites. Later it tried to build its own drones before pivoting to consult clients on how to most efficiently apply unmanned aerial vehicles. While flying high, Airware launched its own Commercial Drone Fund for investing in the market in 2015, and acquired 38-person drone analytics startup Redbird in 2016. In this pre-crypto, pre-AI boom, Airware scored a ton of hype from us and others as they tried to prove drones could be more than war machines. But over time, the software that shipped with commercial drone hardware from other manufacturers was good enough to make Airware irrelevant, and a downward spiral of layoffs began over the past two years, culminating in today's shutdown. Demonstrating how sudden the shut down is, Airware opened a Tokyo headquarters alongside an investment and partnership from Mitsubishi just four days ago. As for the employees, they "will get one week's severance, COBRA insurance until November, and payouts for unused paid time off," reports TechCrunch.
Punk ass lying bitch Ray Morris backed the white supremacist lies about South Africa a few weeks back, he's a punk ass in need of a head cave - https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12520486&cid=57184660
while DARPA takes over.
Open-source was absolutely smashing these guys. They wasted inordinate amounts of time re-writing (poorly) the same features anyone could have for a download.
They should have been more like other "drone" companies and just steal/illegally use the open-source code. DJI wouldn't exist without MultiWii.
140 employees to build, market, and sell a drone.
There is only so much economic need. The world only needs so many competing providers of any given thing.
Economic competition means that most who try, must fail.
The other newspaper editors said I was crazy when I came up with that headline. WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?!?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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Just me?
As for the employees, they "will get one week's severance, COBRA insurance until November, and payouts for unused paid time off,"
Don't forget all those sweet-ass selfies.
I wonder how much money the founders were paid during the development. Also tons of people have designed and built drones using far less money than $118 million dollars - sounds like there was tons of waste too.
It is not possible in principle to compete with Chinese companies because of the prohibitive regulations of the civil UAV market in the US and especially in the EU.
The civil UAV industry is like the space industry was in the second half of the 20th century. This is where innovations happen. This industry could generate millions of new hi-tech jobs. But instead we have got populist law-makers who act speaking figuratively like Chihuahuas attacking anything new and looking back for approval.
Is it still fair to call them a startup?
Commoditization in rapidly innovating and developing industries happens much faster than in more established industries, as the customers gravitate towards the cheapest way of solving their problems. They couldn't create the Android for Drones, but maybe they should have tried their luck on traffic control over a smart city, although that is still in the future and much bigger companies and universities are already working on it.
Don't know if I feel more for the idiots who invested in such a company, or the employee's who just lost their jobs. Wonder what sort of parachute the executives got because they obviously raised quite a bit of money.