ZURI closes €1.3 million funding round as it moves to next phase of developing its hybrid VTOL aircraft

Czech start­up ZURI, which is devel­op­ing hybrid VTOL avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy aimed at region­al pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­porta­tion, has closed a suc­cess­ful round of fund­ing worth €1.3 mil­lion.

This lat­est amount, which was led by suc­cess­ful Czech entre­pre­neurs includ­ing Jaroslav Beck, Jakub Nešetřil and Rastislav Turek, bring the total invest­ment raised to €2.4 mil­lion. The remain­ing €1.1 mil­lion is con­vert­ible notes from Pale Fire Cap­i­tal and KIWI.com, which was con­vert­ed into equi­ty.

The funds will be pri­mar­i­ly used to strength­en the engi­neer­ing team, which will con­tin­ue the devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s air­craft. It will be based on the data acquired dur­ing recent tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor tests. By expand­ing the devel­op­ment team and pur­chas­ing addi­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment, ZURI is mov­ing to the next devel­op­ment phase.

Com­ment­ing on this lat­est invest­ment, Beck said: “Effi­cient trans­porta­tion is a world­wide chal­lenge which demands ambi­tious solu­tion propo­si­tions which along­side leg­is­la­tion changes could be eas­i­ly applic­a­ble for the whole world’s infra­struc­ture. 

“It will take some time to get there but it is impor­tant to build excit­ing solu­tions and I am hap­py that a Czech com­pa­ny is focus­ing on help­ing to solve this prob­lem and will moti­vate oth­er future cre­ators to do the same thing.”

Since 2017, ZURI has been devel­op­ing its three- to four-seater air­craft which is capa­ble of trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go dis­tances exceed­ing 600km. It uses com­bi­na­tion of lithi­um cells and a bio­fu­el-enabled tur­bine gen­er­a­tor, trav­el­ling at speeds of between 250–300km/h.

Nešetřil added: “From unprece­dent­ed glob­al pan­dem­ic to increas­ing focus on envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, recent years have shown us that the mas­sive trans­porta­tion and logis­tics mar­ket is ready for a major dis­rup­tion, and ZURI has a very inter­est­ing propo­si­tion in mid-dis­tance per­son­al trans­porta­tion. Michal’s strong vision and abil­i­ty to exe­cute is a joy to watch and sup­port.”

The sto­ry of how ZURI began start­ed when com­pa­ny founder Michal Illich grew frus­trat­ed at the exces­sive wait­ing times expe­ri­enced dur­ing a flight from Czech Repub­lic to Croa­t­ia. Illich decid­ed to work on cre­at­ing an air­craft which could offer mil­lions of peo­ple a quick­er way of trav­el.

The com­pa­ny released images of its sus­tain­able inte­ri­or design con­cept for its VTOL air­craft, as part of a com­mit­ment to help low­er its envi­ron­men­tal impact on air trans­port.

eVTOL Insights also spoke to Illich ear­li­er this year, where he talked about chang­ing the way peo­ple expe­ri­ence on-demand, door-to-door mid-range flights, by trav­el­ling on your own sched­ule and with­out air­ports.

Illich sug­gest­ed ZURI can build an air­craft which can trav­el fur­ther than 700km in the future, using hybrid-pow­ered tech­nol­o­gy. You can read the full inter­view by click­ing here.