Berlin-based Dryad has raised €10.5 million in new funding. The startup is developing solar-powered environmental sensor networks that provide rapid wildfire detection.
Across the globe, one impact of global warming is being felt every summer season with more and more urgency – wildfires. From Europe to Australia, wildfires are happening with more frequency and intensity and are having massive consequences on the environment, people and wildlife.
Dryad, a Berlin-based provider of solar-powered environmental sensor networks wants to improve wildfire detection and forest monitoring. The startup has just picked up €10.5 million for its tech.
The funding
The €10.5 million Series A funding round follows the company’s first equity seed stage, which raised €1.8 million. It saw investment from STIHL Digital.
This Series A round was led by eCAPITAL. Additional investors include US-based Toba Capital, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and strategic investor Semtech.
Rapid wildfire detection
Founded in 2020 by Carsten Brinkschulte, Marco Boenig, and Cherian Mathew, Dryad has developed an ultra-early wildfire detection and forest monitoring system. It uses low-cost sensors which are solar-powered and operate on a LoRa-based mesh networking infrastructure and a cloud analytics platform.
Wildfires are more common than ever before and the impacts are devastating. It’s reported that the wildfires are actually causing 20% of global CO2 emissions, alongside the obvious impacts on habitats, environmental structures and people.
Dryad is making a real difference with its tech. It’s enabling rapid and ultra-early detection of wildfires as well as health and growth monitoring of forests, using solar-powered gas sensors in a large-scale IoT sensor network. By taking this approach, the sensors can detect wildfires as well as provide valuable insights into the individual micro-climate and health of a forest.
Dr Paul-Josef Patt, CEO of eCAPITAL, commented: “Wildfires represent a huge global problem that has not been resolved effectively for too long. With Dryad’s highly scalable technology, we believe that from now on wildfires will be detected before they can cause damage. We, together with our co-investors, support the company on its mission to save millions of hectares of forest, significantly reduce the threat for humans and animals and avoid the emission of over a billion tonnes of CO2.”
This capital injection will be used by the startup to scale its team, push forward its go-to-market strategy and build on the mission to protect the world’s forests – an admirable mission indeed.
CEO Carsten Brinkschulte, said: “With high levels of funding secured, and industry expertise to support us, we’ll not only be able to further scale our team and provide critical ultra-early detection but also open the forestry market to the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. We thank all our Series A and Seed investors for their trust in our market-leading technology, helping us deliver on our mission to fight climate change and protect our planet.”
