British Airways invests in ZeroAvia - regional plane in the making

There we go!

ZeroAvia keeps strengthening its project to develop a hydrogen-powered aircraft for commercial uses.

Today it’ been announced that it has closed a new round of investment, bringing in an additional $24.3M. This comes from existent shareholders such as Horizons Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Shell Ventures, Summa Equity, and SYSTEMIQ, but, also, interestingly, from British Airways.

In recent weeks the British flag carrier has announced a whole raft of investments in different segments of the green aviation sector, including in several sustainable aviation fuel projects.

The investment in ZeroAvia, although definitely newsworthy is not entirely unexpected, since British Airways was already in a partnership with the hydrogen startup.

Hydrogen hub Britain

This also reinforces the link of ZeroAvia to the UK. Although its founders and part of its activity are based in the US, ZeroAvia has been doing most of its field work, including tests, at Cranfield airfield, in England, and it has also received over $16M in funding from British government research programmes.

ZeroAvia plans to continue with its testing programme in Scotland and other UK locations. It recently completed a ground test simulating its upcoming 60 minute flight across the UK.

Scaling up

Another interesting element in today’s announcement is the fact that ZeroAvia seems to be working on a regional airliner in the 50-seat category (a step up from the >19 seat segment it is currently focused on) and it is even contemplating a 100-seat aircraft towards the end of this decade.

By the way, if you wish to learn more about ZeroAvia, check out the podcast I did with its CFO, Katya Akulinicheva, a few months ago.