Voliro offers a drone platform with several readily integrated tools built for different tasks, including its Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) Sensor pictured above. | Source: Voliro
Voliro, a Swiss aerial robotics developer, announced last week an $11 million extension of its Series A round, bringing the total to $23 million. The company announced the first part of the round in October.
Voliro said the additional capital will help it accelerate the development and global deployment of its autonomous aerial inspection robots. It designed these robots to modernize infrastructure maintenance, enhance industrial safety, and address growing workforce shortages.
“Voliro’s technology directly addresses a trifecta of global needs: improving industrial resilience and safety, enabling the climate adaptation and energy transition by better maintaining assets like wind farms, and alleviating severe workforce shortages in the inspection field. Our technology represents a necessary tool to protect the built environment that we all rely on,” said Florian Gutzwiller, Voliro’s CEO.
The company built its Voliro T platform on a patented tiltable-rotor design and equipped it with interchangeable sensor payloads. Voliro said its technology offers a scalable, data-driven system for safer, more sustainable operations.
Voliro’s Series A extension saw new participation from noa and the addition of a debt facility from UBS. The original round was led by Cherry Ventures.
Inside Voliro’s technology
Voliro designed its aerial robots to inspect hard-to-reach infrastructure safely and efficiently. This includes anything from flare stacks and storage tanks to wind turbine blades and transmission towers, the company said. The Voliro T platform enables asset owners across the energy, chemicals, and renewables sectors to detect issues early and do proactive maintenance.
In the fast-growing wind industry, where uptime is crucial, Voliro claimed it enables five times faster wind turbine lightning protection system (LPS) inspections with instant insights. It also said it is cutting downtime and reducing inspection costs by up to 50%, all without manual access.
Since its founding, Voliro has established a global footprint with over 40 customers in 17 countries, including Chevron, Holcim, and Acuren. Performing over 100 contact inspections monthly, Voliro claimed it has proven success across complex industrial environments.
“Large-scale Industrial inspections are a massive opportunity for robotics and automation disruption. Both aging and new assets, whether industrial, energy, or infrastructure related, will benefit from more frequent, automated, reliable, and data-driven inspections,” Gregory Dewerpe, Founder and Managing Partner at noa.
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Voliro targets aging infrastructures around the world
As industrial assets age, failures in critical, hard-to-access structures like flare stacks, storage tanks, chimneys, and towers are becoming more frequent, risky, and costly, Voliro said. Investigations into major accidents over the past decade repeatedly cite corrosion, wall thinning, or undetected fatigue as root causes. These are issues that are frequently overlooked because traditional inspections are costly, infrequent, and largely reactive.
Voliro asserts these figures are not anomalies. Studies show that up to 30% of major industrial accidents in Europe involve aging infrastructure and integrity issues. Globally, corrosion-related failures are estimated to cost the economy $2.5 trillion annually, the company said.
Traditional inspection methods rely on scaffolding, rope access, and shutdowns—approaches that introduce significant risk, delay critical diagnostics, and limit how often inspections can be performed.
At the same time, in the U.S., nearly two-thirds of certified NDT (non-destructive testing) professionals are over 40, reflecting a broader trend seen across OECD countries, where a wave of retirements is accelerating due to aging populations. As experienced inspectors exit the workforce, industries face an urgent need for smarter technology and tools that reduce reliance on manual access.
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