AI-powered drone company ZenaTech, based in Vancouver, posted an astounding revenue growth of more than 500 per cent in its recent annual results.

The company — which manufacturers drones for defence and land surveys, among other uses — brought in $12.9 million in revenue for its fiscal 2025, which represented an increase of 558 per cent over 2024’s $2 million.

“This has been a transformational year for ZenaTech, marked by strong execution against our drone business strategy, meaningful progress across our software segment, and foundation-building progress towards future success for our defence business. Our revenue growth and total assets surpassing $99.8 million demonstrates the building of significant commercial traction,” Shaun Passley, ZenaTech chief executive officer said in a press release.

The revenue growth was driven by the successful execution of the firm’s drone-as-a-service-strategy (DaaS) as well as completing 20 acquisitions in 2025.

This included 19 land surveying and inspection companies across the U.S., U.K. and Canada, and the U.K.-based enterprise software company Othership Limited, the company reported.

Rise of DaaS market

The relatively new business sector is growing quickly, according to Financial News Media (FNM).

“The global DaaS market is currently estimated in the US$6- to US$8-billion range, but it’s expected to grow aggressively, potentially reaching anywhere from US$27 billion to well over US$150 billion by 2030, depending on the forecast,” according to FNM.

The company started in 2017 selling drone technology to farmers. ZenaDrone was subsequently founded in 2020 by Passley. Today ZenaDrone is a subsidiary of ZenaTech.

It has offices in offices in North America, Europe, Taiwan, South Korea and United Arab Emirates. Its lineup of drones also facilitates power-line inspections, assisting GIS professionals in forestry, as well as other applications in the mining, oil and gas, logistics and warehousing, and agriculture industries.

ZenaTech’s total assets increased 188 per cent from $34.6 million to $99.8 million, as compared to the same period in 2024, the company said.

“In 2025, we accelerated the rollout of our DaaS model establishing a scalable AI-driven autonomy platform that positions us for long-term, recurring revenue growth. At the same time, we advanced bringing ZenaDrone’s innovative solutions closer to commercial and defence deployment and deepened our engagement with military stakeholders for demonstrations and pilot opportunities that we believe will be critical in validating our technology to unlocking future defence contracts,” Passley said.

Largely fuelling the income growth was DaaS, which contributed $10.1 million in revenue. As well, its enterprise SaaS (software as a service) software segment revenue grew to $2.8 million which represents a 43 per cent increase over 2024 figures.

‘Double-digit growth’ in sales

While the company manufacturers drones for other purposes (surveying, inspection and cleaning operations; agriculture and logistics), it was the military segment that is becoming more important as a revenue source, according to Pasley.

“The demand for drone solutions in both the defence and commercial markets continues at double-digit growth, and we believe that we can capture meaningful market share in 2026 and beyond,” he said.

“Our real time response to emerging needs on the international stage has positioned us as a leader in the drone space. We are creating products for land, sea, and air defence, addressing critical asymmetrical modern warfare, that is enemy threats that are inexpensive to deploy but extraordinarily expensive to counter using traditional intercept methods.”

The company highlighted its small one-way Interceptor P-1 model, planned to be priced at less than US$5,000, and IQ Aqua, which can detect and respond to underwater mine threats without putting divers or manned vessels at risk as “cost-effective, scalable solutions” for its defence customers.

It is in the process of establishing a facility in the centre of one of the world’s hottest conflict zones.

“Further, we announced this month that we are in the process of establishing a manufacturing facility and operations in Ukraine to accelerate production of our defence interceptor systems, as well as a testing facility to validate our products under an active threat environment,” Passley said.