MMC Ventures has invested £2.5 million in drone inspection services provider for the oil & gas industry Sky-Futures, the parties have announced.

The backing represents the largest investment into drone technology in Europe. The news follows 700% growth for Sky-Futures in the previous financial year.

The Series A investment will be put towards continuing its rapid growth and to continue building out its integrated technology inspection platform.

Sky-Futures was founded in 2009 and has since clocked up more than 8,500 hours of aviation experience. It already has a footprint of more than 30 clients globally and works in over 10 countries across five regions of the world.

The company’s drone technology provides high-definition (HD) video, stills and thermal imagery data which is then fed into the company’s proprietary data platform. This is subsequently delivered to the client as a technical report.

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The company’s clients number more than 30 of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world; including Apache, BG Group, BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell and Statoil.

This investment follows two significant seed rounds, which included prominent angel investors Nick Robertson (CEO of ASOS) and Jon Kamaluddin (former International Director of ASOS).

Sky-Futures CEO and co-founder James Harrison claimed the business has “experienced a fantastic level of growth in the past year”.

“We recently received the permit to use our drones in United States National Air Space, an incredibly significant development, allowing us to further expand our international operations footprint,” he said.

“Today’s funding announcement marks the next stage for Sky-Futures, and we are looking forward to working with the MMC Ventures team as we further develop our technology-driven commercial drone services.”

MMC Venture investment director called drone technology “an exciting area of innovation”.

“Sky-Futures’ use of drone technology in the oil and gas market is world-leading and changes the game for platform operators in terms of cost, safety and depth of data analysis,” he said.

“We’re excited to work with an exceptional trio of founders in James, Chris and Nick, and look forward to helping the team to take the business to the next level of global scale.”

Further reading on funding: Aspin Group raises £25 through LDC