Donecle combines inspection drones, maintenance records and software, with customer evidence spanning Jet Aviation, the RAF and airline service partners.
Donecle sells a way to inspect aircraft and retain the resulting evidence. Its drones collect images; its software helps maintenance specialists examine them, produce reports and compare an aircraft’s condition over time. The Toulouse company therefore belongs in both the drone industry and the market for maintenance software.
Its public customer record is particularly useful because it shows several stages of adoption. Jet Aviation purchased equipment, obtained a Swiss approval for a defined inspection process and subsequently introduced a different service in the United States. Donecle also reports a Royal Air Force contract following a technical evaluation. Those records make the company more informative than a catalogue of aircraft specifications.
Founded in 2015, Donecle describes its origins in the difficulty of inspecting the upper surfaces of test aircraft. Its corporate history connects the founders’ experience in aircraft maintenance and structures with robotics and computer vision. Its legal notice identifies a French SAS, SIREN 813450350, headquartered in Toulouse.
On 15 April 2026, Donecle announced a €10 million financing round jointly led by IRDI Capital Investissement and SWEN Capital Partners, with GSO Innovation and ARIS Occitanie participating. The announcement identifies private financial backers but does not publish their ownership percentages or establish a controlling parent.
The same dated release reports 35 employees in France. That is a company-reported workforce figure at the announcement date, rather than a projected total including the approximately ten planned hires. It is also more precise than the different undated team counts still appearing on Donecle’s website.
A verified fiscal-period turnover figure was not established from these primary sources. The €10 million figure is financing. It should not populate a revenue comparison or be combined with a customer’s own sales to estimate Donecle’s size.
Donecle’s solution description sets out an offering spanning image capture, analysis, reporting and a retained digital history. Its software presents images against an aircraft model and proposes findings for an inspector to review. The company describes reports covering matters such as visible defects, markings and paint condition.
That human review is commercially significant. The product assists a maintenance organisation’s work rather than simply selling photographs. A buyer must consider whether the resulting records fit its existing responsibilities, documentation and review process. Ease of capture is one part of the value; usable evidence is another.
The Iris GVI product page positions that family around visual inspection of aircraft structures and components. Donecle reports inclusion in Airbus and Boeing maintenance manuals. The precise applicability of a manual entry remains aircraft- and process-specific; a broad marketing phrase about approval does not define every operator’s permitted use.
For business readers, the important comparison is between a general camera platform and a supplier that has developed an inspection workflow around a particular asset class. BDI’s Skydio profile provides another example of hardware linked to software and customer workflows, with a different market emphasis.
Iris CMX extends Donecle’s offering into aircraft coating assessment. The company identifies AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings as its development partner. This combines drone inspection with the expertise of a company already supplying and managing aircraft coatings.
A 4 September 2026 announcement places Iris CMX within AkzoNobel’s Aerofleet Coatings Management service, first introduced in 2023. The stated distinction is between broad visual assessment by Iris GVI and targeted measurements of coating thickness, colour and gloss by CMX. Flight and environmental information also feeds the wider service.
The commercial question is consequently specific: can better condition records improve the timing of repainting decisions across a fleet? That is different from replacing every visual maintenance task. The announcement establishes a product collaboration and intended decision process; it does not disclose a named airline’s independently measured savings from CMX.
This partner arrangement gives Donecle a connection to a specialised maintenance budget. Coating decisions involve aircraft availability and the timing of substantial work, making longitudinal records potentially more useful than a one-off inspection image.
Donecle’s May 2022 acquisition announcement states that it acquired Dronétix Technologie on 20 April 2022. The acquired business developed automated mapping and three-dimensional records of smaller industrial assets, including aircraft engines and landing gear.
The announcement named Safran’s Villaroche facility as a user of Dronétix equipment. That is Donecle’s account of an inherited customer relationship, without disclosed contract economics. Dronétix became a subsidiary at the transaction’s announcement.
The acquisition matters because an aircraft exterior and a removed component are different inspection subjects. Expanding into components gives the business another place within maintenance and manufacturing activity. It also makes consistent records across asset types a plausible commercial objective, rather than assuming every additional application requires a separate standalone drone business.
| Date | Customer record | Commercial significance |
|---|---|---|
| May 2023 | Jet Aviation purchased Donecle technology under a cooperation agreement | Equipment purchase and business-aviation relationship |
| May 2024, recounted in August | Jet Aviation reported Swiss approval for regulated inspections by images | Defined process approval within that customer’s operations |
| May 2026 | Jet Aviation launched a US non-regulated inspection service | Further geographic use with an explicitly different service scope |
In its 2023 statement, Jet Aviation said it had purchased automated drone technology from Donecle and intended to explore integration into maintenance activities. It identified pre-purchase inspections and possible future predictive-maintenance services among the applications.
The customer subsequently reported approval from Switzerland’s FOCA for regulated inspections by images. That is a more concrete adoption milestone than the original intention to explore the technology. It connects the equipment relationship to an inspection process.
Jet Aviation’s 18 May 2026 US launch is explicitly for non-regulated inspections. It describes reports for purposes including pre-purchase, insurance and warranty cases. This distinction makes the chronology useful: expanding into another market need not mean reproducing the same regulatory service there immediately.
The Royal Air Force’s April 2023 account describes an aircraft-inspection technical evaluation at Lossiemouth. It presents potential benefits and planned assessment, rather than a completed fleet-wide rollout.
Donecle’s April 2024 follow-up states that the ASURVEY work progressed from a one-year evaluation to a multi-drone, multi-year contract. The supplier does not disclose a value or exact fleet quantity. Together, the records show a progression from buyer-described evaluation to supplier-reported follow-on business.
A different channel appears in the Viva Aerobus announcement. Its body, dated November 2023, identifies Barfield as the agreement holder supplying Donecle’s solution and providing support to the airline. This places an established maintenance provider between the technology company and the operator.
The implication is that Donecle can reach customers through both direct equipment relationships and partners with service infrastructure. For a relatively small team, the division of local support and product development is a material feature of the business.
The most useful next evidence would be repeat customer purchases, additional approved inspection processes and documented use of accumulated records in maintenance decisions. Donecle’s 2026 financing announcement describes further software development and integration into MRO systems as an ambition, so those subsequent customer records will matter.
BDI’s analysis of Fujitsu’s customer-reported vision-AI metrics offers a useful comparison for evaluating measured workflow benefits. For Donecle, the available sources establish products, named relationships and several adoption milestones. They do not establish audited turnover, full ownership percentages or universal performance gains across all aircraft and customers.
Read company product and acquisition pages, public financing PDF, Jet Aviation customer statements and RAF evaluation account. PDFpage1 visually checked:35employees inFrance15Apr2026; planned hires excluded. Revenue not established. Jet Aviation2026US service explicitly non-regulated; Swiss approval customer-attributed, not blanket regulator endorsement. Viva article metadata conflicts with body; bodyNovember2023 dateline used without precise event-day claim.
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