AeroCloud, a cloud-native airport management platform, raises $12.6 million • InNewCL
AeroCloud, a cloud-native airport management platform, raises $12.6 million • InNewCL
#AeroCloud #cloudnative #airport #management #platform #raises #million #InNewCL Welcome to InNewCL, here is the new story we have for you today:
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AeroCloud, a cloud-native airport management software startup used by dozens of airports around the world, has raised $12.6 million in a Series A funding round.
Founded in 2019 in Chester, UK, AeroCloud says it already works with Manchester and Eindhoven airports in Europe, while in the US it counts Tampa International and John Wayne Airport among its customers, handling around 150 million passengers annually.
At its core, AeroCloud promises all stakeholders access to data via the cloud, with features that support common airport use cases, such as automatic gate assignment for flights and optimization of free gate capacity to increase revenue.
The AeroCloud platform
The company also says it uses machine learning to provide its customers with forecasts based on historical data, e.g. B. Estimating passenger numbers for a specific time of year.
“By introducing AI and machine learning to our intelligent airport management system, we are enabling airport operations teams to plan less and act more,” George Richardson, AeroCloud co-founder and CEO, told InNewCL. “Airports have a range of missions that require varying levels of human interaction on a daily basis. With AI, we can reduce this cognitive burden on individuals and teams, and help free up an airport’s time to focus on other priority challenges.”
The AeroCloud platform also links key data, e.g. For example, what percentage of passengers are currently boarding a particular plane and when it’s scheduled to depart, so she can predict if the plane is likely to depart on time. In addition, it can automatically reassign gates to arriving aircraft if there is a delayed aircraft waiting at the scheduled arrival gate.
“These scenarios happen 100 times a day for our customers, and the AI can always beat the human head to come up with a solution,” Richardson added.
On the surface, the airport management software market might seem like a vertical niche, but Richardson is pointing to the data to highlight the potential for a new player in this space.
“You may see a niche in terms of the number of airports that are in the world, but the potential of the niche is significant — we’re looking at a $20 billion market,” Richardson said, citing figures that show that collected through internal competitor data analysis. “For example, in the US alone there are 508 commercial airports and more than 3,500 non-commercial airports. We have products for most of these customers. But that’s not even the exciting part – the really exciting part is when we reach a critical mass of customers on our system, we have created a network of airports to communicate with each other and share valuable information.”
cloud native
The airport management software space includes established vendors like Amadeus and SITA, but like almost every young climber looking to replace the long-established status quo, AeroCloud touts its cloud-native credentials as a key selling point for potential new customers.
“Large airports currently rely on systems from our competitors that were originally built in the late 1980s,” Richardson said. “This software hasn’t changed much since then – it’s static and not in the cloud. Like many overlooked and underserved industries, airports are extremely challenging environments to bring about change, with many layers of management and perceived risk at board level, which is why they still rely on old-school software.”
According to Richardson, the problem is that many of the on-premises legacy solutions don’t make accessing data easy, instead promoting data silos through homegrown tech stacks. This is problematic in an airport environment, which often needs to act quickly to support any number of fluid scenarios. For example, with diverted planes, when a plane needs to land somewhere nearby quickly due to an emergency, multiple actors are involved from different departments that include gates, customs, passport control, baggage handling, and everyone else.
Getting everyone on the same page, with access to the same data and insights, saves a lot of manual spade work.
“Previously, this would have been handled by the operations team, who would have called around the airport and lined everyone up,” Richardson said. “But with AeroCloud, once the FAA marks the flight as an inbound diversion, we know and notify everyone involved. The platform can let all teams know exactly what’s happening and automatically remind them of the log. Not only is this powerful because it means everyone knows what’s happening, it’s powerful because your operations team can now focus on their work instead of being the whistleblower and chasing everyone around to get ready.”
If any evidence is needed that the public cloud is where it is in 2023, Amadeus, a $25 billion competitor to AeroCloud, recently announced plans to move to the cloud as part of a three-year modernization effort embark
AeroCloud had previously raised around $3.4 million, and with another $12.6 million in the bank, the company said it would use the new funds to accelerate its expansion plans and continue its push, “lethargic.” ousting incumbents”. More specifically, AeroCloud is preparing to double its workforce to 80 by 2023 at its UK and US hubs, and aims to grow its customer base from 42 to more than 100 by the end of the year.
“We may be mostly concerned with passenger aircraft now, but we believe the addition of booming post-Covid cargo air travel and the introduction of drones over the next 5 to 10 years will also benefit from our network and this data,” Richardson said.
AeroCloud’s Series A round was led by US VC firm Stage 2 Capital, which included Triple Point Ventures, I2BF Global Ventures, Praetura Ventures, Playfair Capital and Haatch.
