Hydrogen flight startup ZeroAvia closes new funding round

In a world powered by fossil fuels, you could say the afterburner is on.

But this comparison may not be entirely appropriate when talking about a firm that has made of the development of carbon-free flying its very mission and purpose.

The press release very aptly speaks of “tailwinds”, because this has certainly been an eventful week for ZeroAvia.

In addition to announcing a partnership with British Airways (through its Hangar51 accelerator) and being named as one of the best inventions of 2020 by Time magazine, the hydrogen flight startup (whose CFO, Katya Akulinicheva, I had the chance to host here on the podcast just a few weeks ago) has just announced a new, large funding round.

Or we should better say, two funding rounds in one.

This includes a $21.4M Series A round that have just been closed, led by the Ecosystem Integrity Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (a VC firm founded by Bill Gates) , together with co-investors Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Horizons Ventures, Shell Ventures, and Summa Equity.

To which you can add $16.3M from the UK’s ATI Programme, a governmental initiative to develop new aerospace technologies through the HyFlyer II project, with the participation of the European Marine Energy Centre and Aeristech take part.

This is a combined $37.7M for ZeroAvia to move forward with its hydrogen powertrain development project.

So far, ZeroAvia, whose team and operations are split between the US and the UK, managed to test fly successfully, last September, a first iteration of its powertrain on a 6 seater aircraft.

The goal is to have an hydrogen-powered 19 seater aircraft complete a 350-mile test flight by early 2023, a 80 seater flying 500 miles by 2026 and a 100-seat aircraft covering 1,000 miles by 2030.

A long road ahead, but, little doubt ZeroAvia is going places.