Brisbane's Emesent, a drone-mapping scaleup spun out of Australia's CSIRO in 2018, has raised $15 million to expand its underground autonomous mapping business. The round also includes an additional $10 million venture debt facility, marking the first such deal from the country's National Reconstruction Fund.

The $15 million came via a SAFE note rather than a priced round; the company pointedly declined to call it a Series B. Backers include existing investor Main Sequence, New York's Orion Resource Partners, Queensland's QIC, and super funds NGS and Hostplus. It follows a $32 million Series A in 2022.

Emesent's flagship product, Hovermap, uses LiDAR to build 3D maps of hazardous, GPS-denied environments like mine shafts. It's been deployed across 200-plus mine sites globally, with clients including Rio Tinto, BHP and Glencore, and extends into defence, infrastructure and construction.

Emesent sells 3D spatial capture as an integrated hardware-plus-software ecosystem, layering recurring revenue onto device sales. Customers buy the scanning hardware (GX1, Hovermap) and then operate within Emesent's software stack.

The government debt will fund batch manufacturing at a facility west of Brisbane and development of Emesent's Cortex AI platform for third-party hardware. Emesent employs 109 people and plans to add 21 roles with the fresh funding.