Sterblue
Sterblue built a cloud-based SaaS platform for automated drone inspection of energy infrastructure, including transmission grids, distribution networks, wind turbines, and cooling towers, using AI-powered defect detection and 3D virtual twin technology. The platform ended active operations in 2021, with the team continuing industrial AI work through LabelFlow.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2016
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Sterblue does
Sterblue built a cloud-based SaaS platform for automated drone inspection of critical energy infrastructure, including transmission grids, distribution networks, wind turbines, and hyperbolic cooling towers. The platform combined automatic 3D flight trajectory planning via a parameterized virtual twin model, AI-powered defect detection through a proprietary system called Curiosity, and a cloud workspace for image management, expert review, and report generation. Hardware control was delivered through a mobile app (iOS/Android) compatible with off-the-shelf DJI drones, while a separate perception engine abstracted trajectory generation from any 3D model, reducing pilot cognitive load.
Founded in 2016 in Nantes, France, by three former aerospace engineers including an ex-Airbus CEO (Geoffrey Vancassel), Sterblue served enterprise customers in the utilities and renewable energy sectors across 16+ countries, including EDP, Enedis, ESB, Innogy SE, American Electric Power, E.ON, and several California utilities. The go-to-market combined direct enterprise field sales with a channel of certified drone service partners (e.g., FLIGHTS in Japan, African Techno Lab in Ivory Coast) and accelerator-driven introductions (EPRI Incubatenergy Labs, IlluminationLAB). Revenue was a mix of tiered SaaS subscriptions (Starter $0, Regular $9, Pro $29 per month), training services via Sterblue Academy, and inspection operations delivered through partners.
In 2021, after more than five years of operation, Sterblue ended active platform operations and the team transitioned to LabelFlow, an open image-labeling and dataset management platform for ML teams. LabelFlow carries forward the team's AI and data-annotation expertise, while the Sterblue website remains online for documentation. Total disclosed funding across the company's lifetime was approximately $2.12 million, with no public revenue figures available.
Sterblue firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Sterblue
- Legal name
- Sterblue
- Website
- https://sterblue.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2016
- Operating status
- Closed
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Sterblue built a cloud-based SaaS platform for automated drone inspection of energy infrastructure, including transmission grids, distribution networks, wind turbines, and cooling towers, using AI-powered defect detection and 3D virtual twin technology. The platform ended active operations in 2021, with the team continuing industrial AI work through LabelFlow.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Sterblue industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Drone-based Infrastructure Inspection Software
- SIC
- Search, Detection, Navagation, Guidance, Aeronautical Sys (3812)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) & Multirotor Drones (IMABAIAA)
Keywords
Where Sterblue is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices3 records
Markets served
Sterblue business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- SaaS Platform Subscription: Cloud-based software platform subscription model with tiered pricing plans (Starter, Regular, Pro). Customers pay monthly or annual fees for access to flight planning, data management, AI analysis, and reporting capabilities. Annual billing offers discounted rates.
- Training Services: Online training academy providing courses and certification for drone pilots on Sterblue software solutions. Includes Sterblue Academy for remote training and field training sessions.
- Inspection Operations Services: End-to-end inspection services delivered through certified drone pilot partners. Sterblue provides software while partners perform field operations, creating a service delivery model for utilities.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free tier for single asset programs with guided drone missions and standard PDF reports |
| Subscription | Monthly | Multi-site portfolio management with AI defect detection |
| Subscription | Monthly | Enterprise fleet coverage with custom AI models and dedicated onboarding |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels8 records
Sterblue product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Sterblue provides a cloud-based SaaS platform for drone-based infrastructure inspections of power lines, wind turbines, distribution grids, and cooling towers. The platform combines automatic drone flight trajectory planning, AI-powered defect detection (Curiosity), and 3D virtual twin modeling to deliver standardized inspection data and actionable defect reports to utilities and energy companies. The offering is complemented by a mobile app that controls off-the-shelf DJI drones and a remote training academy for certified drone pilots.
Product overview
Sterblue offers a cloud-based SaaS platform (Sterblue Cloud) combined with a mobile application (Sterblue Mobile) for drone-based infrastructure inspections. The platform integrates AI-powered defect detection through its Curiosity AI system, automated flight trajectory generation via Perception engine using virtual twin technology, and comprehensive reporting. The ecosystem includes Sterblue Academy for remote pilot training, and the work continues through LabelFlow (open image labeling platform). The product portfolio serves wind turbines, transmission grids, distribution grids, and cooling towers for utility and energy companies.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- LabelFlow: Open platform for image labeling and high-quality training datasets for AI/ML teams, continuing the industrial AI work from Sterblue.
Products and services
- Sterblue Cloud Central cloud-based SaaS platform for managing infrastructure inspections end to end. Processes imagery from multiple sources (drone, helicopter, smartphone, satellite), runs AI-powered defect detection, manages inspection data, and outputs reports, dashboards, and digital twins for power and wind assets. Targets utility and energy companies and certified drone service providers.
- Sterblue Mobile
- Sterblue Academy Online training platform providing industry-specific courses and modules that certify drone pilots on Sterblue software solutions for infrastructure inspections. Includes simulator exercises, ghost flights, and remote instructor-led training for wind turbines, transmission grids, distribution grids, and cooling towers.
- LabelFlow Open platform for image labeling and creation of high-quality training datasets for AI/ML teams, continuing the team's industrial AI work after Sterblue ended active platform operations. Helps ML teams build and manage datasets to bring computer-vision-based AI to scale.
Quantifiable outcome
- Inspect entire cooling tower in less than a day with 0.3mm defect precision, saving 50%+ on overall process
- +9 more outcomes
Companies that use Sterblue
Customer profileNamed customers12 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Sterblue technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration9 records
AI capability6 records
Feature10 records
Sterblue partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Four partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.
- FLIGHTScoreTop drone service provider in Japan and exclusive partner for Sterblue wind turbine inspections in the Japanese market. FLIGHTS pilots performed fully remote training and inspections, achieving record inspection times including a 101m diameter turbine in 19 minutes.
- African Techno Lab (ATL)coreDrone service provider partner in Ivory Coast performing distribution and transmission grid inspections for CIE (Compagnie Ivoirienne d'Electricité). ATL has inspected over 5,000 distribution poles and conducted training for transmission tower inspections.
- EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute)coreSelected for EPRI's Incubatenergy Labs technology acceleration program in 2019. This program led to collaboration with major US utilities and the first automated hyperbolic cooling tower inspection in the US.
- IlluminationLABminorSelected among 7 energy startups to collaborate with largest US utility companies through this accelerator program focused on utility innovation.
Scale indicators15 records
Recent moves7 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Sterblue competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy offers a cloud-based platform for drone-based mapping, inspection, and analytics across construction, energy, and agriculture. It is the most direct competitor to Sterblue Cloud, with comparable flight planning, image processing, and reporting features — though Sterblue differentiated more deeply on utility-specific virtual twin and AI defect detection.
- PrecisionHawk: PrecisionHawk provides drone data analytics with a strong focus on utilities and energy infrastructure inspections, including transmission and distribution assets. It directly overlaps with Sterblue's TSO and distribution grid use cases, offering AI-based defect detection and asset inventory from aerial imagery.
- Sharper Shape: Sharper Shape specializes in drone-based inspection services and software for utilities, with deep coverage of transmission and distribution line inspection and vegetation management — a near-identical target market to Sterblue's distribution and transmission grid segments.
- Percepto: Percepto offers autonomous drone-in-a-box solutions for industrial inspection of energy, mining, and oil & gas sites. It targets overlapping end customers (utilities, power plants) with combined hardware and AI software for continuous asset monitoring — competing with Sterblue's vision of automated, always-on infrastructure inspection.
- Cyberhawk Innovations: Cyberhawk is a drone-based inspection services company focused on oil & gas, utilities, and renewables, performing close-visual and thermal inspections on similar assets to Sterblue's wind turbine and cooling tower customers. It operates the partner/service-provider model that Sterblue also cultivated through certified drone pilot networks.
- Sky-Futures / Applus+: Sky-Futures (acquired by Applus+) provides drone inspection services for the energy sector, particularly oil & gas, wind, and power transmission. It directly parallels Sterblue's enterprise field-sales motion and certified-pilot delivery model for utility and energy customers.
- Labelbox: Labelbox is a leading training-data platform for ML teams, offering data labeling, annotation, and workflow tools. As the closest pure-play competitor to LabelFlow (Sterblue's spin-off), it competes directly for the same AI/ML engineering buyer the Sterblue team is now targeting with its 1.5M-image industrial labeling expertise.
Broad incumbents
- Skydio: Skydio is a leading U.S. autonomous drone manufacturer with strong adoption among utilities and critical infrastructure inspectors. While it is primarily a hardware platform (unlike Sterblue's pure-software model), it increasingly bundles inspection software and is reshaping the buyer expectations for autonomous flight that Sterblue's Perception engine pioneered.
- Scale AI: Scale AI is a dominant, well-capitalized data labeling and AI infrastructure provider serving both government and commercial ML teams. It represents the broad incumbent that LabelFlow (the Sterblue successor) must compete against, with Scale's scale advantages offset by Sterblue's claimed deep-domain expertise in industrial/energy imagery.
Others
- DJI Enterprise: DJI is the dominant drone manufacturer whose hardware (M300 RTK, Mavic series) underpins Sterblue's automatic flight planning and trajectory generation. It is a critical enabler and key dependency — Sterblue's value proposition was built on automating DJI flights, making DJI both a partner and a potential competitive threat via DJI's own Pilot/Flighthub software suite.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Sterblue social profiles
Digital presenceSterblue financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Sterblue leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles3 records
Sterblue subsidiaries and ownership
Company hierarchySubsidiaries1 record
Sterblue funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds3 records
Investors7 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Sterblue M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Sterblue
What does Sterblue do?
Sterblue provides a cloud-based SaaS platform for drone-based infrastructure inspections of power lines, wind turbines, distribution grids, and cooling towers. The platform combines automatic drone flight trajectory planning, AI-powered defect detection (Curiosity), and 3D virtual twin modeling to deliver standardized inspection data and actionable defect reports to utilities and energy companies. The offering is complemented by a mobile app that controls off-the-shelf DJI drones and a remote training academy for certified drone pilots.
Is Sterblue a public or private company?
Sterblue is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently closed.
When was Sterblue founded?
Sterblue was founded in 2016. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Sterblue based?
Sterblue is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Sterblue make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. SaaS Platform Subscription is the primary driver. The others are training Services and inspection Operations Services.
Who are Sterblue's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are DroneDeploy, PrecisionHawk, Sharper Shape, Percepto, Cyberhawk Innovations, Sky-Futures / Applus+ and Labelbox. Broad incumbents are Skydio and Scale AI. DJI Enterprise is listed as an others.
Does Sterblue have an API?
Yes. Sterblue offers an API that enables sharing results through 3D network views, PDF and CSV reports. The API is part of the cloud platform for power and wind asset inspections. Developer documentation is at readme.io.
What industry is Sterblue in?
Sterblue's product category is Drone-based Infrastructure Inspection Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is IMABAIAA, Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) & Multirotor Drones. Its SIC code is 3812.