The funding follows the global rollout of Emesent’s GX1 mapping solution
An autonomous mapping and robotics company, Emesent has raised $17 million in recent funding to advance its AI-powered autonomy platform. The plan is to expand its cloud software offerings, and strengthen its presence across the mining, defence, and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sectors.
The funding includes a $7 million venture debt facility from Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) and a $10 million equity investment backed by Main Sequence, QIC Ventures, Orion Resource Partners, Hostplus, and NGS Super.
The company will use the capital to expand manufacturing at its Wacol, Queensland facility and advance two strategic platforms—Cortex AI, its onboard autonomy software for GPS-denied and hazardous environments, and Aura, a cloud-based platform for 3D data processing, visualisation, and analytics. Emesent currently employs 109 people in Australia and plans to grow its workforce to meet increasing international demand.
“This investment accelerates everything we’re building at Emesent,” said Charles Miller, CEO of Emesent. “It enables us to scale manufacturing, strengthen our AI and autonomy capabilities, and expand our presence in sectors including mining, defence, and critical infrastructure.”
The investment marks the NRFC’s first venture debt funding for a deep technology company. The organisation said the financing will help commercialise Australian-developed intellectual property while supporting advanced manufacturing and sovereign capability.
Founded as a spin-out from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO in 2018, Emesent has deployed its flagship Hovermap LiDAR mapping system at more than 200 mine sites worldwide, with customers including Rio Tinto, BHP, and Glencore.
NRFC CEO David Gall said the investment would help strengthen Australia’s robotics and autonomous systems ecosystem while creating highly skilled jobs.
Main Sequence, an early investor in Emesent, also participated in the latest funding round. Mike Zimmerman, Partner at Main Sequence, said the company has established itself as a leader in autonomous mapping technology, completing millions of missions across mines and industrial sites globally.
Emesent’s product portfolio includes the Hovermap STX LiDAR payload, GX1 SLAM scanner, Aura cloud software, and Cortex AI autonomous flight platform. The company serves customers in more than 40 countries across mining, AEC, defence, and critical infrastructure sectors.
The funding follows the global rollout of Emesent’s GX1 mapping solution and supports the company’s strategy of combining autonomous hardware with AI-driven software and cloud services.
