Joby Aviation goes public and valued at $6.6 billion following SPAC merger with Reinvent Technology Partners

Joby Avi­a­tion has become the lat­est eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er to go pub­lic, fol­low­ing a joint SPAC merg­er with Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners — the com­pa­ny co-estab­lished by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoff­mann.

The trans­ac­tion — which is expect­ed to close by the end of Q2 2021 — gives the com­bined com­pa­ny a $6.6 bil­lion post-mon­ey val­u­a­tion, with a $10 per share PIPE sub­scrip­tion price.

This includes $910 mil­lion of ful­ly com­mit­ting fund­ing, inclu­sive of an $835 mil­lion pri­vate invest­ment in pub­lic equi­ty (PIPE), which was anchored by strate­gic part­ners and insti­tu­tion­al investors include Uber Tech­nolo­gies, The Bau­post Group, funds and accounts man­aged by Black­Rock, Fideli­ty Man­age­ment & Research LLC and Bail­lie Gif­ford.

Addi­tion­al­ly, it will also pro­vide $1.6 bil­lion in fund­ing which will help Joby Avi­a­tion through the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its eVTOL air­craft, devel­op­ment of man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties and start of all-elec­tric pas­sen­ger flights by 2024.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “For the last decade, we have been laser-focused on one task — devel­op­ing the best pos­si­ble tech­nol­o­gy for this mar­ket.

“But our long-term vision has always been to build a glob­al pas­sen­ger ser­vice, help­ing a bil­lion peo­ple to save an hour every day, while con­tribut­ing to the pro­tec­tion of our pre­cious plan­et.

“Today’s trans­ac­tion lets us look ahead to the next decade and pro­vides us with the resources we need to bring our vision to life.

“Since our very first meet­ing it was clear that Rein­vent shared our fun­da­men­tal desire to have a pos­i­tive, long-term impact on the world and we couldn’t be more excit­ed to wel­come them onboard.”

With more than 1,000 test flights com­plet­ed over the last decade, Joby Avi­a­tion is regard­ed by many to secure sub­stan­tial first-mover advan­tage in the aer­i­al rideshar­ing mar­ket.

In 2020, it became the first com­pa­ny to agree to a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis for an eVTOL air­craft with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and in the same year, received the U.S. Air Force’s first ever air­wor­thi­ness approval for an eVTOL air­craft.

Towards the end of the year, Joby finalised the terms of an enhanced rela­tion­ship with Uber Tech­nolo­gies, which will see both com­pa­nies inte­grate their respec­tive ser­vices into each oth­er’s apps — allow­ing future cus­tomers to enjoy seam­less mul­ti-mod­el trav­el. Joby also acquired Uber Ele­vate, a divi­sion of Uber focused on the aer­i­al rideshar­ing mar­ket.

The acqui­si­tion includ­ed key per­son­nel — such as Eric Alli­son join­ing as Joby’s new Head of Prod­uct — and a suite of soft­ware tools focused on mul­ti-modal oper­a­tions man­age­ment and demand sim­u­la­tion, fed by Uber’s data.

Joby’s pilot­ed air­craft will be able to car­ry four pas­sen­gers and trav­el up to 150 miles, at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. Joby Avi­a­tion has said it plans to launch com­mer­cial ser­vices in the USA first, before scal­ing glob­al­ly.

Hoff­man, who is co-Lead Direc­tor at Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners, will also join Joby Avi­a­tion’s Board of Direc­tors. He said: “Rein­vent invests in world-class founders and teams who are devel­op­ing indus­try-lead­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices that have the poten­tial to impact mil­lions of lives.

“In Joby we see a remark­able founder-led team that has qui­et­ly deliv­ered the most advanced tech­nol­o­gy we’ve seen in this sec­tor.

“With valu­able strate­gic part­ner­ships includ­ing Toy­ota and Uber, a com­pelling busi­ness mod­el and an unpar­al­leled track-record of exe­cut­ing against its tar­gets, we believe Joby is well-posi­tioned to cre­ate a trans­for­ma­tive new human-cen­tered mobil­i­ty net­work.

“Through our ven­ture cap­i­tal at scale approach, we are com­mit­ted to Joby’s long-term suc­cess as it con­tin­ues on its jour­ney to rev­o­lu­tion­ize com­mutes and dri­ve decades of inno­va­tion in human move­ment.”