Construction, mining and waste management are all old industries, but they can be easily optimized with a little bit of tech.
3D mapping startup Propeller aims to help out these industries with hardware and software that provide worksite analytics. And on Tuesday, the company announced that it raised an additional $18 million in funding to do just that. This new funding round was co-led by Blackbird and Costanoa Ventures, both of which are existing investors in the company dating back to its seed round.
Propeller uses tools like drones and mounted sensors to get an aerial view of a worksite and track the movement of machinery on the site. Information from this hardware is then processed through the Propeller Platform to provide real-time analytics. Worksite operators can then track progress using metrics like stockpile measurements, elevation information, grades, surface areas and other physical and visual properties. When dealing with a large worksite like a landfill or mine, it’s helpful to have an eye in the sky and data on the cloud in order to track what’s going on.
Propeller co-founder and CEO Rory San Miguel said that the company raised this new funding for two main reasons: to continue its rapid expansion and bolster the launch of its new product DirtMate.
“Our new product DirtMate is the real-time complement to our existing workflow,” San Miguel said in a statement. “We’ve taken our existing GPS technology and created a version that’s easy to install on every earthmoving machine. As each machine is moving across the worksite, moving dirt, we track elevations to build surfaces in real-time, within a few centimeters of accuracy. With DirtMate, we move from being a retrospective tracking solution to a solution that can detect issues and suggest improvements in real time.”
If interested in learning more about how DirtMate works, you can watch this video.
Like other digital solutions companies, Propeller has seen an uptick in use during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company saw 40 percent more worksite surveys uploaded to its platform in Q2 compared to Q1.
Propeller is used in over 4,000 different worksites, across 50-plus countries. The 138-person company is based in Denver and Sydney, Australia.
“All of this is made possible by Propeller’s epic team and epic customers who are ridiculously generous with their time in helping us solve real problems on site,” San Miguel said in a statement. “It’s very exciting to see Propeller hit its stride. We have a lot to be proud of and lots more to do.”
