A 25-year-old police drone founder just raised $75M led by Index

If you ever call 911 from an area that’s hard to get to, you might hear the buzz of a drone well before a police cruiser pulls up. And there’s a good chance that it will be one made by Brinc Drones, a Seattle-based startup founded by 25-year-old Blake Resnick who dropped out of college to run the company. Brinc, which was founded in 2017 and counts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as a seed-stage investor, just announced today that it has raised $75 million in new funding led by Index Ventures. This brings the startup’s total funding to $157.2 million so far. While Brinc isn’t disclosing its exact valuation, Resnick told TechCrunch it’s an “up-round” compared to its most recent round, a $55 million Series B in 2022. Brinc was last valued at $300 million in 2023, Bloomberg reported. Brinc sells a variety of drone systems to police and public safety agencies. It’s part of a broader trend of U.S. drone startups manufacturing domestically due to increasing restrictions against Chinese companies th ... Read full article.