DJI and Accel Partners Form Drone Investment Fund

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A “Phantom 2” drone by DJI shown flying over Paris last year.Credit Charles Platiau/Reuters

Accel Partners, the venture capital firm, and DJI, the Chinese drone maker, have formed a small investment fund to support more drone and advanced robotics start-ups.

The $10 million investment pool, appropriately named SkyFund, will consist of equal contributions of $5 million from each company. The plans are for the fund to make investments in early-stage companies starting in amounts of around $250,000. The announcement of the fund comes just weeks after Accel said it had invested $75 million in DJI, one of the leading makers of drones, which are also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or U.A.V.s.

“The objective is to really accelerate activity in this market and build an ecosystem of companies producing interesting new technologies and applications using U.A.V.s,” Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel, said in a phone interview.

Mr. Gandhi said the start-ups that SkyFund invests in could include software companies, makers of hardware components and firms building applications for specific commercial markets like agricultural inspection and aerial photography. It isn’t likely that the fund will invest in a direct competitor to DJI, in part because that start-up would have to be comfortable with DJI gaining access to financial and technical information about its business.

Of course, such access could be an issue, too, for other start-ups, even if they are not competing directly with DJI since the drone maker could decide to enter new businesses. Mr. Gandhi said that start-ups that accept having DJI as an investor would in turn receive early access to DJI’s product road maps and test products.

“It’s very much a two-way street,” he said.