Australian autonomous mapping and robotics company Emesent has announced US$17 million in new funding, including a US$7 million venture debt facility from the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) and a US$10 million equity round backed by a syndicate of investors.
The company said the funding will be used to scale manufacturing at its Wacol, Queensland facility and to develop two product initiatives: Cortex AI, its onboard autonomy software designed for operations in GPS-denied and hazardous environments, and Aura, its cloud platform for 3D data processing, visualisation and analytics.
Emesent said it employs 109 people in Australia and plans to grow to meet demand from overseas markets.
CEO Charles Miller said the investment would accelerate development efforts and support customers operating in demanding environments.
NRFC CEO David Gall said the investment was the fund’s first venture debt deployment to a deep technology company, and framed it as support for commercialising Australian-developed intellectual property and building local capability in robotics and autonomous systems.
Emesent’s flagship Hovermap product is deployed across more than 200 mine sites globally, according to the company, with customers including Rio Tinto, BHP and Glencore.
The equity round was supported by a syndicate including Main Sequence, QIC Ventures, Orion Resource Partners, Hostplus, and NGS Super. Main Sequence partner Mike Zimmerman said the firm was continuing its support as Emesent scales.
In April, Teledyne FLIR Defense announced an expansion of its Third-Party Payload Integration Program, certifying Emesent’s Hovermap LiDAR payload for use across Teledyne FLIR’s unmanned aerial systems, ground robots, and radiation detection platforms. The companies said the agreement provides GPS-denied 3D mapping capabilities using LiDAR-based simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), which generates 3D maps without GPS or external infrastructure.
Emesent’s portfolio includes the Hovermap STX LiDAR payload, the Emesent GX1 scanner, Aura data processing software, and Cortex AI autonomous flight software, serving customers across mining, AEC, defence, and critical infrastructure in more than 40 countries, the company said.
