(Bloomberg) -- German drone developer Quantum-Systems GmbH has received $17.5 million in new funding from investors including US billionaire Peter Thiel and German firms Project A Ventures and Sanno Capital. 

Thiel hailed Quantum-Systems, which supplies the Ukrainian armed forces with reconnaissance drones, as “leaps ahead” of the competition, according to a statement Sunday.

Quantum-Systems is developing docking stations that allow unmanned aerial vehicles to be charged and deployed without human operators for use by the military, border patrol, mining companies and for surveillance in cities, Chief Executive Officer Florian Seibel said in an interview.

“The future of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] is in neither software nor hardware alone, but in the intelligent synthesis of the two,” said Thiel of Quantum-Systems’ approach.

Quantum-Systems has supplied 42 drones to support the Ukrainian army via the German armed forces, Seibel said. 

Seibel added that the process of military tech development and procurement in Europe is too slow. “We cannot keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars to develop technology that is outdated once it gets deployed,” he said. 

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