The UAV Factory secures first round of financing from Skype co founder Toivo Annus

UAV Factory, a vertically integrated manufacturer and designer of long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles and platforms, announced today that it has secured first round of financing to meet increasing customer demand for UAV platforms, expand company’s engineering staff and improve company’s infrastructure.

Toivo Annus, the co-founder and former Head of Engineering at Skype led the private investment. Toivo is an experienced investor who will bring not only new investments to UAV Factory, but also valuable expertise of growing early stage high tech companies into large organizations with strategic thinking and vision. In his recent interview from Tallinn, Estonia, Mr. Annus said, “I am very excited to participate in the first round of private investment with UAV Factory. I strongly believe in UAV Factory growth potential and dominan position in the long endurance UAV marketplace”.

“This round of financing is a critically important milestone for our company,” said Konstantins Popiks, UAV Factory CTO and co-founder. “This investment will be used to expand the capabilities of the latest unmanne system, the Penguin C; and to continue research and development of endurance-enabling technologies that will permit Penguin UAVs to stay airborne up to four days without landing”.

The goal of the company is to provide the first commercially available and reliable extreme endurance unmanned aircraft system for the new promising applications such as pipeline monitoring, data relay or rescue missions. Extreme endurance is UAV Factory’s core specialty since it was founded four years ago.

In July 2012 the company set a world record by demonstrating nonstop flight capability of more than 54 hours with its Penguin B system. The performance and endurance of this system has led to more than 100 units sold and deployed in over 30 countries worldwide.

http://www.uavfactory.com/