Portfolio · 08 / 08
Kestrel Survey
Aerial route surveys for transmission utilities and short-line railroads.
Kestrel flies fixed-wing and rotorcraft surveys for transmission utilities and short-line railroads. The aircraft carry a calibrated multi-sensor payload—visual, infrared, and lidar—and the data they collect runs through Kestrel's own software to produce route condition reports for the engineering teams that operate the underlying infrastructure.
The business is unusual: it pairs an operating service flown out of small airfields with a software product that runs on the data the aircraft collect. Both halves are growing, and they reinforce each other. The flight crews see what the software gets right and what it gets wrong.
We led Kestrel's seed in 2020 and its Series A in 2026. The firm holds a board seat.
Product
From the Kestrel Survey portfolio file.
By the numbers
- Aircraft
- 6
- Route-miles / year
- 41,000
- Sensor payload
- Vis · IR · LiDAR
From the file
“An operating service flown out of small airfields, paired with software that runs on the data it collects.”
Visit
Opens Kestrel Survey in a new tab.