Where does Nick Pilkington work?

Nick Pilkington is CTO & Co-Founder of Drone Deploy.

What companies did Nick Pilkington found?

Nick Pilkington founded Drone Deploy.

Where did Nick Pilkington go to school?

Nick Pilkington studied at University of Cambridge (PhD, Machine Learning).

What has Nick Pilkington written?

Nick Pilkington has 1 tracked post on nickp.svbtle.com, including "Gem Island".

Nick Pilkington

Founder

CTO & Co-Founder at Drone Deploy

San Francisco, California, United States

FoundedDrone Deploy

About

Nick Pilkington is the co-founder and CTO of DroneDeploy, the reality-capture platform Procore agreed to acquire for about $845 million in July 2026. A Rhodes University graduate and Nelson Mandela Scholar with a machine-learning PhD from Cambridge, he worked at NVIDIA and Toshiba Research, co-founded the South African bitcoin exchange Luno, scouts for Sequoia Capital, and coaches South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.

Deal analysis

DroneDeploy × Procore: who got the money home
An estimated liquidation waterfall of the $845m all-cash exit: every class converted — seed money made ~33x, founders took ~$127m, and the 2025 insider round returned ~1.4x in ten months.
Read the analysis →

Beyond investing

Founded: Co-founded Luno, the South African bitcoin exchange, before DroneDeploy.
Education: Machine-learning PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Nelson Mandela Scholar, after Rhodes University and an MPhil in NLP and signal processing.
Communities: Sequoia Capital scout and coach of South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.

Mentioned above: the University of Cambridge mafia →

From published sources — common ground for a warm intro.

CTO & Co-Founder at Drone Deploy

Intro paths

→

In turn, Nick can intro founders to Drone Deploy's investors below.

Drone Deploy's investors · 11

AirTree VenturesSydney · $132K – $16.5M checks AngelPadSan Francisco · $120K checks Bessemer Venture PartnersRedwood City · $5M – $100M checks DCVC (Data Collective)Palo Alto · $5M – $25M checks DRONE FUNDTokyo Emergence Capital PartnersSan Francisco · $500K – $10M checks Energize CapitalChicago · $10M – $20M checks Frontline VenturesSan Francisco · $540K – $3.2M checks High AlphaIndianapolis Scale Venture PartnersSan Francisco · $5M – $25M checks Uncork CapitalSan Francisco · $3M – $5M checks

Co-founders at Drone Deploy

Mike WinnCEO & Co-Founder

Jono MillinChief Data Officer & Co-Founder

Michael WinnFounder

Nicholas PilkingtonFounder

Experience

DroneDeployCTO and Foundercurrent2013 — presentSan Francisco Bay Area
Sequoia CapitalScout Investor2017 — 2025San Francisco, California, United States
NVIDIASoftware Engineer2006 — 2008Santa Clara, United States of America

Skills & more

Software Engineering33Machine Learning34Cloud Computing20Web Development8Programming10Software Development8Start-ups4Large Scale Systems1Engineering Leadership1Engineering Management1DronesEntrepreneurship1

+8 more

PhotogrammetryComputer ScienceAlgorithmsBirthday CakesPythonC++JavaScriptPython (Programming Language)

Languages English

From Nick's professional profile.

Writing

All posts ↗

Gem Island2020-09-04

A walkthrough of a combinatorics puzzle computing the expected gems held by the richest islanders, presenting successive algorithms from brute-force enumeration to closed-form counting of unique distributions.»

Frequently asked questions

Who is Nick Pilkington?: Nick Pilkington is the co-founder and CTO of DroneDeploy, the reality-capture platform Procore agreed to acquire for about $845 million in July 2026. A Rhodes University graduate and Nelson Mandela Scholar with a machine-learning PhD from Cambridge, he worked at NVIDIA and Toshiba Research, co-founded the South African bitcoin exchange Luno, scouts for Sequoia Capital, and coaches South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.
Where does Nick Pilkington work?: Nick Pilkington is CTO & Co-Founder of Drone Deploy.
What companies did Nick Pilkington found?: Nick Pilkington founded Drone Deploy.
Where did Nick Pilkington go to school?: Nick Pilkington studied at University of Cambridge (PhD, Machine Learning).
What has Nick Pilkington written?: Nick Pilkington has 1 tracked post on nickp.svbtle.com, including "Gem Island".