The drone surveying market is expected to continue to gain momentum due to increasing demand for aerial intelligence and high-precision mapping across major sectors such as agriculture, mining, construction, and environmental monitoring. Fact.MR analysis indicates that the industry will be valued at USD 1.97 billion in 2025 and grow to USD 11.49 billion by 2035, at a strong CAGR of 19.3% during the period. Technological improvements in LiDAR, thermal imaging, and real-time data streaming over the past three years have dramatically improved safety and efficiency in drone surveying. Drones are increasingly being employed by governments and institutions for commercial use as they are safe, accurate, and cost-effective. Support from authorities, especially in Europe and North America, is fueling commercial usage with better regulatory frameworks.

ZenaTech, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZENA) is pursuing a strategy aligned with these structural market conditions. Originally operating across multiple technology segments, the company has transitioned toward a services-dominant model, with Drone-as-a-Service (DaaS) representing the majority of revenue by Q3 2025. This shift reflects broader industry behavior, where end-customers increasingly outsource drone operations rather than purchase and manage fleets internally due to pilot staffing, training, maintenance, and regulatory compliance requirements.

Industry Conditions Supporting a Services-First Model

Commercial land surveying in the United States is characterized by fragmentation. The market includes thousands of privately held firms, many specializing in small geographic regions with limited technology investment capacity. Traditional surveying methods remain labor-intensive, time-constrained, and exposed to safety risk in areas involving elevation, remote terrain, or active construction environments. These limitations have not prevented market demand but have contributed to variable project timelines and inconsistent operational throughput across providers.

Drones address these challenges through accelerated data capture, reduced field exposure risk, and higher-resolution terrain modeling. However, drone programs require specialized pilots, structured flight compliance, insurance, hardware maintenance schedules, and chain-of-custody documentation for government or critical-infrastructure contracts. These overhead requirements limit hardware-first adoption and favor managed service models where organizations pay for survey output and analytics rather than hardware ownership.

Renewable energy and utility infrastructure are among the fastest-growing commercial demand segments. Solar developments require terrain mapping at pre-construction, post-installation, and maintenance intervals to monitor grading shifts and flood risk exposure. Mining and aggregates operators increasingly perform stockpile measurement and safety inspection in monthly or quarterly cycles. Precision agriculture relies on seasonal aerial monitoring, combining plant-health imaging with irrigation analysis. These use cases have created recurring commercial demand loops suitable for predictable services contracting rather than single point-in-time hardware purchases.

Acquisition-Led Expansion Strategy

ZenaTech is expanding geographic coverage through the acquisition of existing surveying and mapping service providers. The acquired firms contribute established regional clients, local contracting licenses, government relationships, and ongoing revenue. ZenaTech provides drone platforms, flight-operations support, and automated data processing capacity at the parent-company level, aiming to convert inherited manual workflows into standardized aerial data service pipelines.

As of 2025, the company has completed 12 U.S. acquisitions, with an active stated target of 25 by mid-2026. These deals expand ZenaTech’s operational territory most heavily in western and mountain states, regions where aerial surveying offers competitive advantages due to elevation, line-of-sight hurdles, and terrain access constraints that increase the cost and time-intensity of traditional crews.

Two 2025 acquisitions illustrate the strategic rationale:

• A Utah-based LiDAR and 3D mapping provider — delivers immediate presence in solar-infrastructure terrain intelligence, a commercial segment where high-density elevation data is a requirement for site permitting and development planning.

• Rampart Surveys (Colorado) — adds nearly 30 years of established client relationships across commercial and government survey contracting, increasing coverage in a terrain profile well suited to aerial data capture.

The acquisition-first approach accelerates ZenaTech’s expansion into revenue-producing regions without requiring it to build market trust from inception in each territory. The long-term objective is a unified national DaaS delivery standard supported by centralized drone operations and AI-assisted data analytics.

Indicators of Commercial Traction

The company’s Q3 2025 financial disclosures reflect the shift toward services-driven operations:

• DaaS accounted for approximately 82% of quarterly revenue, indicating the services segment is no longer transitional but core.

• Total revenue increased more than 1,200% year-over-year in Q3 2025, driven predominantly by newly acquired and converted service contracts.

• Working capital and cash reserves expanded during the 2025 period, supporting continued acquisition activity and post-deal integration requirements.The enterprise SaaS segment, while smaller than DaaS, also exhibited triple-digit growth year-over-year, suggesting software and analytics bundling may contribute long-term contract value expansion.

These results reflect commercial deployment activity rather than prototype or hardware resale-driven revenue cycles. Profitability at scale has not yet been demonstrated, reflecting integration costs, acquisition amortization, and service pipeline standardization investments typical in early consolidation phases.

Conclusion

ZenaTech is assembling a national presence in drone-enabled surveying and aerial data services using a services-first commercial model that aligns with current customer adoption preferences. The company is scaling coverage in a U.S. surveying market dominated by small, fragmented incumbents by acquiring existing revenue-producing firms and upgrading delivery through centralized drone platforms and analytics. The commercial traction exhibited in 2025 financials demonstrates services deployment at increasing scale, though integration discipline and contract margin standardization remain determining factors for long-term positioning.

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