Madrid start-up Flox raises $1.5 million, led by Kibo Ventures, for airport wildlife AI

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Flox, a Madrid start-up founded in 2024, has raised $1.5 million (about €1.4 million) in a round led by Kibo Ventures. The money goes into scaling a computer-vision system that spots wildlife at airports and works out both what it is and what it is doing, since a bird perched on the runway and a flock forming above it are rather different problems.

The system combines thermal cameras, which work in darkness and fog, with optical cameras that identify the species and local weather data, starling flocks being partial to particular temperatures and winds. Flox says it now handles feeds from more than 1,200 cameras at once, with 800 milliseconds from image to alert, after a twelve-month pilot at Barajas and two regional airports. The model learned from 4.7 million labelled images of 87 bird species, plus one category for mammals that wander onto the airfield, and in validation tests named the 20 riskiest European species correctly 91.3% of the time.

Airports pay a monthly fee per active camera and can use the cameras they already have, or rent Flox's thermal units within the subscription. The company also sent technical data to the consultation ahead of EASA's March 2026 guidelines, which for the first time name computer vision as a recommended monitoring tool. Next is a planned $5 million Series A in the first quarter of 2027, a target of 50 active airports by the end of that year, and operating profitability in 2028.