Airport management software provider AeroCloud Systems has raised US$12.6m in Series A funding – bringing the total the company has raised to US$16m.
The new funding will enable AeroCloud to scale up, with plans to double the team of 40 by the end of the year across its headquarters in Macclesfield in England, as well as its offices in London and Florida. This is intended to help the company reach its target of over 100 customers in 2023, which will require growing its presence in North America and Europe and delivering new product launches based on machine learning, AI and self-service.
The funding round was led by US fund Stage 2 Capital. I2BF Global Ventures, Triple Point Ventures, Praetura Ventures and Starburst Ventures also joined in the round along with existing investors Playfair Capital and Haatch. The Praetura and Haatch commitments to the round were supported with additional investment through British Business Investments’ Regional Angels Programme.
AeroCloud uses technologies such as AI and machine learning combined with hardware to support airport operations, drive communication among stakeholders and increase airport efficiency and operating margins. The platform has been designed to enable faster passenger processing times, improved self-service check-in and bag-drop facilities and increased communication between stakeholders to deal with real-time fluctuations in processes.
AeroCloud is currently focused on small to medium-size airports, which often depend on either Excel spreadsheets or inflexible, unwieldy and expensive legacy software to run their operations. By comparison, the company’s modular, scalable management platform centralizes all the siloed data across an airport into one platform that can be accessed by all stakeholders, providing an overview of everything taking place. The platform uses AI to highlight inefficiencies and improve operations, from flight management to passenger predictions and gate management. AeroCloud asserts that after using its platform for two weeks, an airport can be running more efficiently, helping to decrease operational costs and increase margins. These efficiency gains are expected to have a knock-on effect, enabling airports to employ more people, add more airlines and positively affect the local economy.
AeroCloud’s cloud-native platform facilitates unlimited licenses per customer so an airport’s stakeholder base can have access to it at no extra cost. This means AeroCloud can be used on any device wherever an airport’s team is based, whether that’s on-site or remote, and ensures the platform is more secure than legacy systems, which are often run on centrally located stack servers.
AeroCloud has partnered with 42 customers in less than three years, ranging from Manchester Airport in the UK and Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands to Tampa International Airport and John Wayne Airport in the US. Collectively, its software processes more than 150,000,000 passengers annually. Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Florida began using the tool to automate gate allocation and passenger prediction analytics. This helped it take on new airlines and grow its annual passenger figures from 900,000 in 2019 to over 3,400,000 in 2022. The platform can also help airports reduce their carbon footprint by rationalizing plane taxiing, resulting in less fuel used by airlines and ground crews.
George Richardson, co-founder and CEO at AeroCloud, said, “The airport industry has had a difficult few years, which has only increased the need for a scalable, intelligent platform like AeroCloud. Before we launched AeroCloud, airports were forced to use legacy technology that was difficult to scale and barely fit for purpose. Now, it takes only 24 hours for an airport to onboard onto our platform, and within two weeks it’s already driving efficiency and operation gains. In fact, AeroCloud’s technology is so easy to use that it supports millions of operational decisions a day and doesn’t require anyone to be on-site. Raising capital in this market has been tough but I am delighted with the results owing to our strong growth and impressive team. It’s been an incredible few years building this business and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds, which I am sure will be very exciting for airports globally and our investors.”
Liz Christo, a partner at Stage 2 Capital, said, “In only a short time, AeroCloud has become the definitive operating software for small to medium-size airports. Each module is so critical to running an airport’s operations that good enough is not an option, it has to be perfect. George and Ian [Forde-Smith, chief technology officer of AeroCloud] have built an impressive team dedicated to delivering an amazing customer experience, and we can see that it’s working, with airports across North America and Europe signing multi-year contracts and putting their confidence in AeroCloud. I’m excited to work with the team to accelerate their growth in the US and support George and Ian as they build a generational software company.”
To learn more about AeroCloud’s operations management technologies, visit Booth 3305 at Passenger Terminal Expo, which runs from March 14-16, 2023, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.