AutoFlight secures $100 million in funding from Team Global to develop its cargo aircraft into passenger-carrying services

Aut­oFlight has received a $100 mil­lion invest­ment from Euro­pean tech­nol­o­gy investor Lukasz Gad­ows­ki (Team Glob­al), who also becomes a part­ner at the Chi­nese start­up.

Gad­owski’s com­pa­ny has stakes in around a dozen star­tups in the avi­a­tion sec­tor world­wide — includ­ing drones and flight con­trol in addi­tion to air taxis. The financ­ing will be used to evolve AutoFlight’s car­go-vehi­cles into pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing air­craft.

To that effect, a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram accord­ing to Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Asso­ci­a­tion (EASA) stan­dards will be ini­ti­at­ed. The com­pa­ny will estab­lish a Euro­pean sub­sidiary, which like­ly will be locat­ed in south­ern Ger­many.

Tian Yu, Chair­man and CEO of Aut­oFlight, said: “Wel­come Lukasz. That’s a big step for our com­pa­ny. Team Glob­al will help us to expand R&D, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tion glob­al­ly. At Aut­oFlight, we are deter­mined to unlock the skies for mass indi­vid­ual trans­port in air. Just in the past month, our autonomous pas­sen­ger eVTOL proof of con­cept air­craft V1500M has accom­plished its maid­en flight.”

Aut­oFlight is one of the ear­li­est tech com­pa­nies in Chi­na to start mak­ing autonomous eVTOL, includ­ing large pay­load logis­tic and autonomous unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs). Logis­tic UAVs were intro­duced first. Aut­oFlight has now accu­mu­lat­ed near­ly 10,000 take­off and land­ing flights and has been test­ed in all kinds of extreme con­di­tions.

Yu added: “The Aut­oFlight evtol air­craft is designed to be safe & safer, clean & qui­et, afford­able & avail­able, com­fort­able & pleas­ant. To ful­fil and deliv­er this vision the col­leagues from Aut­oFlight worked hard over the years and set­tled on a con­fig­u­ra­tion and busi­ness mod­el we believe is best suit­ed for the above require­ments.

“The basis of this design is a so-called „lift and cruise“ con­fig­u­ra­tion — that com­bines supe­ri­or range and safe­ty with the advan­tages of low com­plex­i­ty and thus high afford­abil­i­ty and cer­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty to the high­est stan­dards of avi­a­tion safe­ty.”

The Euro­pean Tech hold­ing com­pa­ny Team Glob­al, based in Berlin, has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly built up exper­tise in avi­a­tion over the past few years, grad­u­al­ly expand­ing its port­fo­lio to about a dozen invest­ments world­wide.

In Europe, Team Glob­al is back­ing Volo­copter and Zap­a­ta Rac­ing in Europe, Archer in the USA and now Aut­oFlight in Asia. Addi­tion­al­ly, there are invest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies devel­op­ing com­po­nents for next gen­er­a­tion avi­a­tion and clean ener­gy com­pa­nies — in ener­gy gen­er­a­tion (Seaborg, HB11, Enpal) and ener­gy stor­age (Theion).

Gad­ows­ki. added: “We are very proud and hap­py to join such an amaz­ing com­pa­ny like Aut­oFlight with a fan­tas­tic team and a great founder. Air mobil­i­ty is a beau­ti­ful nascent indus­try ready to grow. No need to build more roads – that pre­serves resources and nature and makes our cities more liv­able.”

Aut­oFlight spe­cialis­es in devel­op­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cles. Aut­oFlight’s mis­sion is to pro­vide safe and reli­able aer­i­al logis­tic sys­tems and urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tions for human soci­ety. It is head­quar­tered in Shang­hai, with a pas­sen­ger flight con­trol sys­tem research cen­tre in Europe and oper­a­tion and test cen­tre in the USA. The com­pa­ny owns a diver­si­fied eVTOL prod­uct mix, with a focus on large scale logis­tic air­craft and autonomous pas­sen­ger aer­i­al vehi­cles.

Yu added: “The Aut­oFlight eVTOL air­craft is designed to be safe & safer, clean & qui­et, afford­able & avail­able, com­fort­able & pleas­ant. To ful­fill and deliv­er this vision the col­leagues from Aut­oFlight worked hard over the years and set­tled on a con­fig­u­ra­tion and busi­ness mod­el we believe is best suit­ed for the above require­ments.

“The basis of this design is a so-called ‘Lift + Cruise“ con­fig­u­ra­tion — that com­bines supe­ri­or range and safe­ty with the advan­tages of low com­plex­i­ty and thus high afford­abil­i­ty and cer­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty to the high­est stan­dards of avi­a­tion safe­ty.”