Airware CEO: Putting the Drone Supply Chain on Autopilot

In the consumer tech business, hardware and software tend to play pretty well together.

Not so in the world of commercial drones, which are increasingly being used for everything from monitoring crops to delivering vaccines. The hardware and software in the drone world is often still custom-made from the ground up each time.

San Francisco-based Airware is trying to change that with a set of standardized hardware and software that drone makers can tap to handle basic functions like flying and storing data. The company has raised more than $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures and others. It’s led by Jonathan Downey, an MIT-educated electrical engineer and computer scientist who flew passengers on tours of the Grand Canyon and worked for Boeing on a 6,000-pound unmanned helicopter.

Mr. Downey spoke with The Information about the challenges of building a drone business and how more standardized drone hardware could expand how drones are used. Edited excerpts below.