DroneDeploy Surpasses 20 Trillion Sq Ft of Visual Site Data, the Largest Visual Dataset in Construction

With four AI agents active and robotics missions up 160% year over year, 13-year dataset now foundation for industry's most comprehensive AI and robotics system

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, April 22, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- DroneDeploy, the robotics and AI platform used on over 3 million sites, today announced it has surpassed 20 trillion square feet of captured real-world visual site data – the largest visual dataset in the construction industry, accumulated over 13 years of production operations across 3 million sites in 180 countries.

The milestone reflects more than a decade of capture, beginning with aerial drone surveys at the company’s founding in 2013, expanding to ground-level 360 walks in 2020 and adding ground robotics capture in 2021.

Key highlights:

● 20 trillion square feet surpassed – accumulated from aerial drone surveys, ground-level 360 walks and autonomous robotics captures across 3 million sites in 180 countries.

● 34 million end-user annotations across 3 million project locations, covering aerial and ground image segmentation, construction progress tracking and 120,000 labeled safety examples – the structured dataset powering DroneDeploy’s four AI agents.

● Four AI agents are active across the platform. Progress AI, Safety AI and Inspection AI generate structured data and insights from visual evidence. Embodied AI drives autonomous capture with ground robots and docked drones.

● Robotics missions grew 160% year over year in 2026 so far. Docked drone missions reached 13,000 and autonomous ground robotics missions hit 16,000 year to date in 2026 – already surpassing the full-year 2024 total.

DroneDeploy’s four AI agents draw on 34 million end-user annotations across 3 million sites – including aerial and ground image segmentation, construction progress labeling and 120,000 labeled safety examples. That annotation depth is what gives the agents field-level accuracy: the ability to identify installed work, flag safety conditions and track trade progress in environments where conditions change daily and tolerances are measured in inches.

"We've been capturing and processing real field data since 2013, across every major construction category, site condition and project type. By the time we built Progress AI and Safety AI, we had the labeled, structured data to train on the edge cases that make construction AI fail when the underlying dataset is thin," said Mike Winn, Co-Founder and CEO at DroneDeploy. "That depth compounds. The models improve with every project added, and that's what makes them accurate in production environments where the cost of a wrong call is real."

Data center growth

Alongside its robotics and AI momentum, DroneDeploy has seen its fastest-growing segment emerge in hyperscale data center construction. Approximately $120 billion in annual hyperscaler capital expenditure flows into data center construction. The general contractors building those projects are standardizing on DroneDeploy as the operational platform for documentation, progress tracking and safety across their data center portfolios.

Over 300 active data center projects run on DroneDeploy globally, and they are growing fast: active users on data center and mission critical projects have grown 128% year over year. For a construction category defined by compressed schedules, high regulatory scrutiny and cost-per-day overrun exposure in the tens of millions, the combination of autonomous daily capture, AI-generated progress reports and automated safety monitoring represents a structural risk management tool.

Robotics momentum at its highest point

DroneDeploy has operated ground robots on construction, oil and gas and renewable energy sites since acquiring robotics software company Rocos in 2021. The cumulative total now exceeds 70,000 autonomous ground missions. Docked drone capabilities were introduced in 2024, adding a second layer of autonomous capture alongside ground robots, and now exceed 40,000 missions to date. Robotics missions are up 160% year over year, with year to date 2026 missions already surpassing all of 2024.

Across all capture modes, the platform processed more than 770 million images in 2025 – part of a cumulative total exceeding 2.7 billion images since 2018. More than 10 million drone flights and 48 million 360 walkthroughs have been conducted on the platform since founding. Ground robots and docked drones now add two autonomous capture layers alongside manually flown drones, extending the dataset at a pace and consistency that manual walks cannot match.

Barton Malow and the shift to autonomous capture

Barton Malow, one of the largest general contractors in the United States, has used DroneDeploy since 2018 and recently deployed ground robots across active project sites. The goal: remove the dependency on manual site walks and give project teams a reliable daily visual record of conditions on every floor.

“We’ve been using DroneDeploy since 2018 and the platform has become central to how we manage projects. Adding robots gave us consistent daily captures from the same vantage points every night, and Progress AI and Safety AI turn those captures into morning reports I can act on from anywhere. That combination of robotics and AI is a force multiplier for our project teams,” said Alex Tanguay, Business Transformation Manager at Barton Malow. “The captures are valuable in and of themselves, but the analytics are really the gold. It’s like building an oil platform – you don’t build it because you want an oil platform. You build it because you’re going after the oil.”

DroneDeploy reached break-even in September 2025, simultaneously closing a $15 million strategic investment from existing backers to accelerate its AI and robotics roadmap. The capital and all incremental customer revenue is being deployed against what the company sees as a compounding advantage: each new project captured adds labeled data, each labeled dataset improves agent accuracy and each improvement drives deeper adoption across the installed base.

=====

About DroneDeploy

DroneDeploy powers field teams with robotics and AI. Used on over 3 million sites in 180 countries, DroneDeploy is the only platform that combines drones, robots, 360 cameras and AI agents to capture and organize site conditions into a single, time-stamped record that teams can trust in the field and office.

From construction and energy to infrastructure and agriculture, the world’s largest companies use DroneDeploy to document work in place, verify quantities, resolve disputes faster and keep projects on time, on budget and safe.

=====

Escalate PR
for DroneDeploy
+1 617-312-5942
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
TikTok
X

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.