This round is a bet that aviation is finally ready to replace broken procurement plumbing with AI.
Estonia-based SkySelect has raised EUR 8.33 million in growth funding, co-led by Verb Ventures and RockCreek. The company is targeting one of aviation’s most stubborn operational pain points: sourcing and managing aircraft parts in a supply chain where delays quickly become grounded aircraft and lost revenue.
The strategic logic is straightforward. Airlines and MROs still rely on fragmented, legacy workflows for parts procurement, inventory visibility and vendor coordination. SkySelect is positioning its AI tooling as a practical layer that can reduce aircraft-on-ground (AOG) time and curb excess stock by improving how parts are identified, quoted, purchased and tracked.
Why investors are leaning in
The investment case is anchored in the scale of the inefficiency. SkySelect points to roughly USD 50 billion in global excess inventory in the aviation ecosystem, alongside about USD 40 billion of annual airline spend. That is the kind of addressable waste that can justify software spend even in a cyclical industry, especially when the commercial outcome is measurable: fewer AOG events, faster turnaround, less capital tied up in surplus parts.
The round also carries a clear validation signal. In addition to the co-leads, Bain Capital Ventures and Lux Capital participated, alongside SmartCap Green Fund. Bain Capital Ventures and Lux are existing, top-tier Silicon Valley investors, and their continued involvement suggests confidence that SkySelect’s approach is gaining traction beyond a pilot-heavy, proof-of-concept phase.
Traction across North America and Europe
SkySelect’s customer list has expanded since launch to include JetBlue, Widerøe, Vueling, Sun Country Airlines, and Air Transport Services Group. The company says it is adding approximately one new major client per month, indicating growing acceptance in a market that is traditionally cautious about workflow changes.
That adoption pace matters because aviation procurement is not a “try it and see” environment. Integrations, compliance requirements, and operational risk make procurement teams conservative. Winning recognizable airline and aviation-services names helps de-risk the sales motion and shortens the credibility gap with the next buyer.
Where the money goes, and what to watch
SkySelect plans to use the funding to enhance its AI tools focused on reducing AOG delays and excess inventory. In practical terms, that likely means deeper automation in parts identification and purchasing workflows, improved data normalization across suppliers and systems, and better decision support for buyers managing time-critical AOG scenarios.
Execution risk is still real. Aviation data is messy, and any AI product in procurement lives or dies by accuracy, auditability, and the ability to plug into existing enterprise systems without disrupting operations. Customer churn is also a key watch item in this category: procurement teams may trial tools enthusiastically, but renew only if savings and turnaround-time improvements are consistent and provable.
Market read-through
This financing fits a wider pattern: investors backing vertical AI that attacks high-friction, high-cost industrial workflows rather than generic enterprise automation. Aviation supply chain and procurement is a particularly ripe target because the cost of failure is visible and immediate, and the legacy systems are widely viewed as fundamentally broken.
For SkySelect, the next proof point is scaling from early wins to repeatable deployments across fleets and geographies, while maintaining the reliability required for mission-critical procurement. If it can keep landing major clients at its current pace and demonstrate sustained reductions in AOG events and inventory bloat, the platform could become a reference case for how AI modernises one of aviation’s most entrenched back-office functions.