California-based drone startup Skydio is flying into friendly skies with a lucrative deal with public-safety tech player Axon.

The strategic partnership will allow Axon to offer Skydio’s autonomous drone platform to law enforcement and emergency agencies through the company’s Axon Air brand.

As a Skydio Elite Partner, Axon will be the exclusive reseller and digital evidence management partner of Skydio products to public safety agencies worldwide. The two companies are also working on a joint product plan to seamlessly integrated Skydio drones with Axon Air, Axon Evidence and Axon Respond.

How it works

The partnership is expected to be a happy marriage between drone tech and platforms that provide real-time situational awareness and evidence management. Agencies will be able to easily manage and share imagery captured by Skydio drones alongside corresponding body camera footage in Axon’s digital evidence management platform. By integrating the two with Axon’s real-time operations platform, Respond for Devices, command staff and 911 dispatchers will be able to access live-streamed views from the ground and sky.

Skydio’s flight autonomy engine and 3D adaptive scanning software, Skydio 3D Scan, will also enhance public safety operations and efficiency by automating scans of crime and accident scenes to create 3D reconstruction models.

Full potential of autonomous drones

“Over the last year, we’ve seen strong momentum of Skydio drones in public safety,” said Mark Cranney, Skydio COO. “We are excited to partner with Axon, the leader in connected public safety technologies and a company that shares our commitment to the responsible use of technology to keep communities safe, to accelerate this trend globally. The integration of Axon’s and Skydio’s market-leading solutions will deliver unprecedented value and unlock the full potential of autonomous drones for live aerial intelligence and accurate evidence management.”

“This partnership underscores Axon’s commitment to ensuring that everyone gets home safe,” said Axon Air General Manager, Aydin Ghajar. “Skydio’s leading position in autonomous flight aligns with Axon’s vision of enhancing response times and offering first responders a turnkey drone program that provides a safer, more effective method of gaining situational awareness and gathering evidence.”

“This will continue to push Axon’s value as a real-time tool for law enforcement and first responders,” noted Motley Fool analyst Travis Hoium. “If you think about the company’s products over the last decade, it started with tasers, added cameras that needed to be docked to extract data, and then introduced wireless data backup. But live streaming is really the future.”

Blue skies for Skydio

The announcement is yet another patch of blue sky wafting across Skydio’s business horizon. Earlier this month, the drone startup snagged a $170 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Growth Fund—the largest investment round scored by a drone company so far. Last year, Skydio set the record at $100 million.