Europe’s drone market faces a growing problem. While demand for drones in farming and industry is rising fast, the market is still dominated by Chinese manufacturers. This creates concerns around supply chain reliability, data security, and long-term access to critical technology. At the same time, farmers and industrial operators are under pressure to work faster, use fewer resources, and keep people out of dangerous jobs.
This is where ABZ Innovation comes into play! The Budapest-based company has raised €7 million in new funding to scale its heavy-duty agricultural and industrial drones. The round was led by Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Day One Capital and Assembly Ventures.
Europe-made alternative
ABZ Innovation is building a European-made alternative to dominant drone suppliers. Led by Karoly Ludvigh, ABZ Innovation is a manufacturer of heavy-duty agricultural and industrial drones for spraying, spreading, cleaning, and other specialised tasks, focused on robust hardware, high payload capacity, and long-term partner support.
Ludvigh says, “Our mission is simple: we build drones that take people out of dangerous, repetitive work while helping farmers and industrial operators do more with less. This investment lets us scale production, deepen R&D, and equip a growing global network of distributors and service providers with reliable, heavy-duty systems they can turn into revenue-generating services.”
In agriculture, drones are used to spray and spread fertilisers and crop protection products. This allows farmers to apply inputs more precisely, reduce water and chemical use, and deal with labour shortages, especially in orchards and other high-value crops.
In industrial settings, ABZ’s cleaning drones replace manual work in risky environments, such as cleaning at height or on contaminated surfaces. This improves worker safety and cuts downtime for industrial operators.
The company designs and manufactures robust drones in Hungary and pairs them with a full-stack European autonomy platform. This approach helps customers meet regulatory requirements while keeping control over their data and operations. Its solutions are used by partners in 25+ countries worldwide.
What’s next?
The company will use the funds to expand production capacity, speed up product development, and expand its global distributor and service partner network.
Csaba Kákosi, Managing Partner at Day One Capital, added: “The CEE region is producing a growing number of top-tier deep tech companies that are becoming leaders on the global stage.”
