Birdwatchers call the little fella in the photo the scops owl, but pilots call him “foreign object debris” (FOD) because he’s resting inside the wheel well of a fighter jet. If the owl were to get sucked into the engine during liftoff, it would sadly die and endanger the safety of the flight. 

FOD is a serious threat, and airline companies bleed up to $22.7 billion annually because of it. One startup has gotten funding from the U.S. military to develop robot flocks capable of disposing of it safely and efficiently. Soon, it will publish a new equity fundraising opportunity series for regular investors, and you have the exclusive opportunity to buy your stake today. 

While birds are dangerous, rocks, cables, and pieces of metal on the runway can cause even bigger problems. Remember The Concorde? It was the first commercial aircraft that flew at supersonic speeds. It could get you from New York to London in 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. But its state-of-the-art engineering couldn’t save its passengers from a piece of metal scrap in the year 2000. As it was taking off, the piece of metal punctured the tire, causing it to explode. The pieces of the exploded tire then damaged the fuel tank, which resulted in the airplane crashing. More than 100 people died because of something preventable.

AvaWatz Inc. is a startup that’s building a solution to soul-crushing events like these. The mission is to power robots with the tech needed to take over dangerous, boring human tasks. Picking up pebbles after every plane takes off is tedious, repetitive work and the margin for error is significant. But in aviation, there’s no room for error- it can result in loss of life. That’s why AvaWatz got the support of the U.S. Air Force and Army. It’s developing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platforms to work together and eliminate runway debris with minimal human intervention. The company already has $16 million in its sales pipeline, up to 10% of which will likely be realized by the end of 2024.

While solving the runway debris problem may be the most profitable at the moment, it’s far from the only kind of space that faces the same issues. Bridges, warehouses, factory lines and various other structures require the same kind of cleanliness to operate efficiently. The hyperfocus on debris is the company’s way of earning its stripes in the market by solving one major issue. That’s what Google, Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. did before branching out and earning billions of dollars per year.

It may seem that the company’s addressable market is nowhere near what Google was aiming for in its early days, but the reality may surprise you. AvaWatz is a project made by robotics, AI and autonomous computing experts to tackle a $1.2 trillion market. Its end goal isn’t to make specialist robots. It’s to create AI programs that power different robotics to be adaptable, multipurpose companions capable of handling a variety of tasks humans shouldn’t be doing today because of the high risk, repetitiveness and slow speed.

AvaWatz already secured over $2 million in funding from over 800 regular investors in a previous round. Now, it’s working on rolling out another equity raise, and you can show your interest in it by reserving a stake.

Click here to purchase your shares. 

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