If you are into sustainable aviation, chances are that you have come across ZeroAvia some way or another.

This fast growing startup, which is developing hydrogen fuel-cell powertrains for aircraft, has been making headlines pretty much every other week.

From its Californian roots, ZeroAvia is now operating across five separate locations in the US and the UK and has raised funds from some of the most prominent names in the global business community, including the likes of Amazon, Shell, Bill Gates’ investment fund Breathrough Energy Ventures, the IAG Group, American Airlines and United Airlines, to name just a few. Moreover, it has also standing partnerships with a whole range of aerospace and technology companies, such as Textron and PowerCell.

The star role of ZeroAvia in the green aviation ecosystem is not something exactly new, in fact we already did an episode, back in 2020, with the firm’s CFO, Katya Akulinicheva.

But so much is going on that I thought that, two years after that first episode, it was time to invite ZeroAvia’s founder and CEO, Val Miftakhov, to come to the podcast and share some details of where his company is at now and what are the next milestones we should keep an eye on.

We also talk, of course, of Val’s earlier entrepreneurial experience, building, quite literally, electric cars out of his garage, and review some of the key aspects of the hydrogen-powered technology that ZeroAvia is working on and that have driven recent decisions such as the acquisition of UK-based fuel cell technology company HyPoint.

So, tune in with a wide-ranging conversation with one of the World’s green aviation leaders!

UPDATE: right on the day when this podcast was slated for publication, ZeroAvia tested successfully for the first time in flight its 19-seater demonstrator (Val had anticipated this on our conversation)!