Nearly a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira co-founded Replay, a company that created a video format for 360-degree replays, the type of replays that have become an integral part of major sports broadcasts.
Replay caught the attention of Intel, which acquired the company in 2016 for a reported $175 million, and led Aviv and Matteo to a chance meeting with Rubi Liani, the founder of Israel’s official drone racing league (FRIL).
Liani got the brothers involved in drone racing and planted the seed of the idea for their next startup. xtenderthat he helped found.
“As founders, we saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between our experiences,” Aviv told TechCrunch. “We recognized the exceptional skills required to control advanced robots, particularly drones. “Our vision was to develop technology that makes controlling these robots intuitive and accessible, like the way users interact with smartphones without requiring deep technical knowledge.”
Xtend provides a platform that allows operators to manage drones and robots developed internally by Xtend and third-party providers. With Xtend’s platform, operators can directly control drones and robots (optionally with a virtual reality headset) or train AI models to deploy in drones that identify objects and help navigate indoor and outdoor environments. Today, the company announced a $40 million funding round led by Chartered Group with a post-money valuation of around $110 million.
“Our platform allows drones and robots to autonomously perform specific tasks, such as entering buildings and scanning floors,” Aviv said. “Most importantly, it allows ‘common sense’ decisions (such as judging situations or adapting to unforeseen circumstances) to remain in the hands of human supervisors.”
Xtend allows operators to organize teams of drones and robots, not just individual machines, and have them perform certain tasks autonomously, such as moving from one waypoint to another. Meanwhile, Xtend analyzes data from previous deployments to recommend actions a trader could take.
The Wolverine drone from Xtend.
“Xos allows a single supervisor to supervise a team of robots performing tasks in multiple locations simultaneously,” Aviv said. “We believe that full autonomy is not the ultimate goal, but rather a subset of capabilities.”
Xtend presents its technology as general purpose, aimed at customers in industries ranging from public safety to logistics. But the company leans heavily toward military, defense and law enforcement applications.
Xtend contracts with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US Department of Defense to “develop and deliver their systems”, including drone interceptor systemsfor “operational evaluation” – including a $9 million settlement with the Pentagon’s irregular warfare office. And Aviv is not ashamed of the company’s ambitions to move into what he calls “new civilian market opportunities,” such as public and private security.
“Imagine a police officer coordinating drones to search a large area for a suspect,” Aviv said. “Xos can empower these professionals to take advantage of robotic assistance.”
This could be problematic, given that regulations are still largely lacking. for police useand drones have been used to monitor legal demonstrations. For example, in 2020, congressional Democrats raised the alarm that then-President Donald Trump’s administration had used drones and spy planes to observe demonstrations in Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., according to Al Jazeera.
Furthermore, Xtend has recently found itself in the spotlight of international observers.
Statewatch and Informationsstelle Militarisierung (IMI) found Analysis shows that Xtend, among other Israeli companies and military institutions involved in drone deployment, received an R&D grant from the EU’s Horizon Europe fund despite a ban on EU funding for military projects and defense.
Aviv has taken a strongly pro-Israel stance in the country’s ongoing war against Hamas. narration Ctech that Xtend has “redirected energies to support the IDF 100%.” On its website, which features testimonies from Israeli troops in Gaza, Xtend says it allows “soldiers to perform precise maneuvers in complex combat scenarios.”
in a interview Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Aviv said that Xtend has been working with the IDF for some time, initially to shoot down incendiary balloons coming from the Gaza Strip. Since then, its drones have been used to map and explore underground tunnels dug by Hamas in Gaza and, much more alarming, have been sent on reconnaissance missions. equipped with explosive charges such as grenades.
Controversial as it may be, the strategy appears to be working for Xtend’s business. The company says it has won $50 million in contracts to date among its customer base of “more than 50” organizations, including government defense agencies.
“We are unleashing the true potential of robotics in complex scenarios, including first response, search and rescue, and critical infrastructure inspection,” Aviv said. “Hundreds of Xtend’s robotic systems and drones are already operationally deployed around the world, and we are continually developing Xos and those platforms to deliver the future of human-machine collaboration.”
With the new financing, which brings the total raised by Xtend to $65 million, a combination of platform as a service and software-as-a-service sales models. International expansion is on the roadmap, with a specific focus on Japan.
