aircloudA 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 Chester, UK, in 2019, AeroCloud says it is already working with Manchester and Eindhoven airports in Europe, while in the US it counts Tampa International and John Wayne Airport as clients, processing some 150 million flights. passengers each year across the board.
At its core, AeroCloud promises all stakeholders access to data via the cloud, with features that support common use cases in airports, such as automated gate assignment for flights and optimization of free gate capacity. to increase revenue.
The AeroCloud platform
The company also says it leverages machine learning intelligence to serve its customers with forecasts using historical data, such as estimating ridership for a specific time of year.
“By introducing AI and machine learning into our intelligent airport management system, we are enabling airport operations teams to plan less and act more,” AeroCloud co-founder and CEO George Richardson told TechCrunch. “Airports have a set of tasks that require varying degrees of human interaction on a day-to-day basis. With AI, we can reduce that cognitive load on individuals and teams, and help free up an airport’s time to focus on other priority challenges.”
The AeroCloud platform also combines key data, such as what percentage of passengers are currently on a specific plane and when it is due to depart, allowing you to predict whether the plane is likely to leave on time. Additionally, you can automatically reassign gates to incoming aircraft if your scheduled arrival gate has a delayed aircraft still waiting there.
“These scenarios are happening 100 times a day for our customers, and AI can always beat the human head to find a solution,” Richardson added.
On the surface, the airport management software market may seem like a niche vertical, but Richardson points to the data to highlight the potential for a new player in the space.
“You might see a niche in terms of the number of airports there are in the world, but the potential for niche is significant — we see a $20 billion worth of market,” Richardson said, citing figures obtained through the internal competition data analysis. “For example, in the US alone there are 508 commercial service airports and more than 3,500 non-commercial service airports. We have products that suit most of these customers. That’s not even the exciting part though – the really exciting part is that when we reach a critical mass of customers in our system, we will have created a network of airports to communicate and share valuable information with each other.”
cloud native
The airport management software space includes legacy incumbents like Amadeus and SITA, but like almost all young upstarts looking to supplant the long-established status quo, AeroCloud touts its cloud-native credentials as a major selling point. for potential new customers. .
“Large airports today rely on our competitors’ systems, originally built in the late 1980s,” Richardson said. “This software has hardly changed since then: they are static and not in the cloud. Like many ignored and underserved industries, airports are extremely challenging environments to implement change, with many levels of management and perceived risk at the board level, which is why they still rely on old-school software.”
The problem, according to Richardson, is that many of the legacy on-premises solutions don’t make data easy to access, but rather promote data silos across local technology stacks. This is problematic in an airport environment that often needs to act quickly to support any number of fluid scenarios. With diverted planes, for example, where a plane in the vicinity needs a place to land quickly due to an emergency, this involves multiple players from different departments spanning gates, customs, passport control, baggage handlers, and everything in between.
Getting everyone on the same page, with access to all the same data and information, saves a lot of manual work.
“Previously, this would have been done by the operations team calling through the airport and getting everyone in line,” Richardson said. “However, with AeroCloud, we know and inform all stakeholders the moment they FAA marks the flight as an inbound diversion. The platform can inform all computers exactly what is happening and automatically remind them of the protocol. This is not only powerful because it means everyone knows what’s going on, it’s powerful because now your operations team can focus on their job, instead of being the tipper and chasing everyone to get them ready.”
If any evidence is needed that the public cloud is in the same place it is in 2023, Amadeus, a $25 billion competitor to AeroCloud, recently announced plans to move to the cloud as part of a recovery effort. three year modernization.
Before now, AeroCloud had raised about $3.4 million, and with another $12.6 million in the bank, the company said it will use the new funds to accelerate its expansion plans and continue its drive to “displace the lethargic headlines”. 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 to over 100, from the current 42, by the end of of year.
“We may be dealing primarily with passenger aircraft now, but we believe the addition of the booming post-Covid air cargo traffic and the introduction of drones in the next 5-10 years will also benefit from our network and this data.” Richardson said.
The AeroCloud Series A round was led by US venture capital firm Stage 2 Capital, with participation from Triple Point Ventures, I2BF Global Ventures, Praetura Ventures, Playfair Capital and Haatch.
