Verizon buries Skyward, its drone company

Verizon is shutting down Skyward, the drone startup it purchased in 2017.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Skyward President Mariah Scott moved into Verizon’s new Robotics Business Technology division, which will focus on robots on the ground. It’s not clear how many total employees were affected by the shutdown.

“Skyward, a Verizon company, announced that it was exiting its drone business,” Verizon wrote in a statement to Dronelife. “The company remains focused on its investment in ground robotic management, connectivity services, and solution development. The Verizon Robotics Group enables enterprise customers to efficiently adopt and scale Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) to improve productivity, deliver faster time to insight, and reduce costs through automation and 5G. This decision is about market agility and ensuring that Verizon continues to focus on areas that provide both near and mid-term growth opportunities. We continue to focus our investment on ground robotics including incubedIT, supporting industrial and outdoor uses in the US and Europe.”

We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause you,” Skyward wrote in an email to customers affected by the move that was shared on social media.

The news comes at a difficult time for Verizon. While its rivals continue to gain traction in the 5G market, Verizon announced relatively sluggish first-quarter results. And, according to a new Bloomberg report, the company is considering raising its mobile service prices due to inflation following a similar move by AT&T.

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