Accel Partners invests $75m in China drone maker DJI

DJI, the Shenzhen-based drone maker, has secured a $75m investment from Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed Facebook and Dropbox, in the group's biggest single investment in a Chinese start-up.

The investment values the company at $8bn, according to people close to the deal, making it the latest beneficiary of interest from global investors in Chinese technology groups.

Sameer Gandhi, the Accel partner who led the investment, compared DJI with Apple for its ability to combine hardware and software to create a new kind of technology platform, for which other developers can create apps.

"We had a thesis about a new market opportunity to build an advanced robotics platform business, and unmanned aerial vehicles being a big part of that," Mr Gandhi said.

He added that while Silicon Valley has had a "dominant share" of well-known technology companies, DJI's emergence from China marks "a very important moment", even as he warned against "irrationality" in some tech company valuations.

Rivals include California-based 3D Robotics, which raised $50m from investors including chipmaker Qualcomm in February.

DJI's funding will be used to expand further beyond the "Phantom" line of consumer drones, for which it is best known, into more industrial areas.

"We aspire for DJI to offer a platform ... across areas as diverse as filmmaking, agriculture, conservation, search and rescue, energy infrastructure, mapping, and more," said Frank Wang, DJI's chief executive and founder.

Accel and DJI plan to make further announcements about how they will galvanise a developer community around its devices in the coming weeks.

Hundreds of companies have already made apps for DJI's Phantom, a remote-controlled "quadcopter" with a high-definition camera, which costs about $1,000.

Pix4D, which makes 3D maps and models from images captured from the air, used a Phantom to digitally recreate damaged areas of Kathmandu after Nepal's recent earthquake.

DJI remains in talks with other investors to raise further funding. Those deals could see its valuation rise to $10bn, several people close to the discussions say, as the Financial Times reported last month.

The high price tag attached to the nine-year-old company has prompted concerns that a bubble may be emerging in China's tech sector.

"There's certainly a lot of exuberance and perhaps even irrationality in valuations, whether it's in China, India, the US or global tech in general," Mr Gandhi said.

"We are ultimately backing companies we think are going to be long-term category winners and that will be good companies in all kinds of different environments."

Mr Gandhi's previous investments at Accel include Dropcam, the internet-connected camera company sold to Google's Nest last year, and Dropbox, the cloud storage company that is among Silicon Valley's most highly valued private companies.

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