Procore Technologies completed its $845 million cash purchase of DroneDeploy on 9 September, six weeks after signing the deal. DroneDeploy is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the construction software company.
The price is subject to adjustments for working capital, cash, debt and deal costs, Procore said in a filing. On top of it, Procore is setting up a pool of equity awards to keep DroneDeploy’s staff. The Federal Trade Commission ended the antitrust waiting period early, on 1 September.
DroneDeploy builds no aircraft. It sells the software that runs a drone’s flight checks and turns its pictures into maps and 3D models. It also handles imagery from ground robots and from fixed and wearable cameras. Procore says the software is used on more than 3 million jobsites in over 180 countries.
Procore wanted the pictures. It cites about 20 trillion square feet of DroneDeploy imagery and more than 100,000 labelled safety issues. It plans to pair them with its own archive of nearly 400 million photos. The goal, it says, is AI that spots problems on a site and acts on them.
Ajei Gopal, Procore’s chief executive, said in July that the company would “immediately cross-sell DroneDeploy’s solutions” after closing. Mike Winn, DroneDeploy’s chief executive, said customers wanted reality capture built in, “not another tool bolted on”.
To fund it, Procore sold $825 million of zero-interest convertible notes due in 2031, priced on 3 August. It said part of the money would go to the DroneDeploy purchase. It had also lined up a Goldman Sachs bridge loan of up to $700 million.
The drone business is now a line inside a construction platform. Procore’s own filing calls it cloud software for drones and other robots. The outlook Procore issued on 29 July left DroneDeploy out entirely.
