Skydio Hires Tesla & Samsara Vets to Boost Enterprise Drone Solutions

Skydio, a leading innovator in autonomous drone technology, has strengthened its leadership team with the addition of three new executives in product and engineering. This expansion follows the company’s successful completion of a $100 million Series C funding round and supports its strategic shift towards serving enterprise and public sector clients, moving beyond its initial focus on consumer applications.

Roy Goldman joins Skydio as the head of product management, bringing with him extensive experience from Tesla, where he served as a software development director for five years, and more recently from Carbon, where he held a comparable leadership role.

Ryan Reading has been appointed to lead Skydio’s software engineering efforts. Previously, he was a vice president of engineering at Samsara and most recently served as their general manager of fleet safety.

Mike Ross also comes to Skydio from Samsara, where he directed the telematics product group. He will now function as a senior director of product management at Skydio.

According to a company statement released on Thursday, these three individuals will be instrumental in bringing to fruition Skydio’s vision for a groundbreaking, fully integrated autonomy system tailored for enterprise applications.

Skydio CEO Adam Bry highlighted in a recent blog post that the new hires’ demonstrated ability to deliver successful enterprise products featuring cloud-connected hardware will be a vital asset to the company’s future growth.

The $100 million in funding secured earlier this year is designated to accelerate the development of Skydio’s next-generation products specifically for the enterprise, public sector, and defense industries.

Skydio originally concentrated on the consumer drone market, having launched two models since its establishment in 2014. These consumer drones utilize advanced artificial intelligence to enable flight without direct human control. The autonomous system is capable of tracking both moving objects and individuals, while simultaneously navigating around potential hazards like trees, power lines, and other obstructions.

This summer, the company unveiled its X2 drone platform, engineered for professional and enterprise applications. Skydio has previously detailed the X2’s capabilities, including an integrated 360-degree superzoom camera, a FLIR thermal camera with 320x256 resolution, a flight time of 35 minutes, and a maximum operational range of 6.2 miles. Shipments of the X2 are scheduled to begin in the final quarter of the current year.