Ascendance Flight Technologies raises €21 million in new funding round

Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies has raised €21 mil­lion from French Tech Sou­veraineté, oper­at­ed by Bpifrance as part of the France 2030 plan, CELAD, Expan­sion Aero­space Ven­tures, SC Mahé, Adrien Mont­fort (CTO Sorare) via Snaw Ven­tures, and ARIS Occ­i­tanie.

They have con­tributed to this fund­ing round along­side his­toric investors Habert Das­sault Finance, Céleste Man­age­ment, IRDI, and M‑Capital, which have made ‘sig­nif­i­cant rein­vest­ments’ on this occa­sion.

The aim of this round is to give Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies the resources to fly its full-scale pro­to­type, begin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and scale-up actions for its first air­craft, and help its first clients and part­ners to reduce the car­bon emis­sions of their air­craft thanks to the company’s hybrid tech­nol­o­gy.

“This fundrais­ing round will accel­er­ate the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial devel­op­ment of our prod­ucts and these part­ners will ensure that they can sup­port the com­pa­ny through its upcom­ing devel­op­ment stages,” said Jean-Christophe Lam­bert, co-founder & CEO of Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies.

Adrien Muller, direc­tor of invest­ments at Bpifrance, added: “Bpifrance is delight­ed to sup­port Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies in its aim to rev­o­lu­tionise and decar­bonise civ­il avi­a­tion via French Tech Sou­veraineté.”

Benoit Habert, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Habert Das­sault Finance, con­tin­ued: “We are impressed at the pace at which the com­pa­ny is grow­ing, the imple­men­ta­tion of its roadmap, and the com­mit­ment of its teams.”

Vin­cent Gardeau, pres­i­dent of CELAD, con­clud­ed: “We were drawn to Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies’ decar­bonised project and tak­ing part in this ven­ture is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port France’s envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly aero­nau­tics ecosys­tem. The syn­er­gies between our com­pa­nies are in our IT and elec­tron­ics exper­tise in embed­ded sys­tems.”

As a man­u­fac­tur­er of both air­craft and engines, the Toulouse-based start­up has focused on sus­tain­able avi­a­tion mar­kets since it was found­ed in 2018, hav­ing cho­sen hybrid elec­tric propul­sion as a real­is­tic approach to sus­tain­able avi­a­tion.

Its ATEA VTOL air­craft is a low-car­bon alter­na­tive to heli­copters that pro­vides the need for decen­tralised and region­al point-to-point avi­a­tion with STERNA, its mod­u­lar hybrid elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem.

The com­pa­ny announced 245 let­ters of intent for ATEA in 2022 and car­ried out full-scale test­ing of its hybrid tech­nol­o­gy, with 50 jobs to be cre­at­ed over the next 18 months.

STERNA’s hybrid propul­sion sys­tem allows mul­ti­ple ener­gy sources to be used at the same time, thanks to its Hybrid Oper­at­ing Sys­tem for on-board ener­gy man­age­ment intel­li­gence, and new aero­nau­tic bat­tery solu­tions.

It will accom­mo­date a ther­mal com­bus­tion mod­ule pow­ered by sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel or new hydro­gen solu­tions. With a range of 400 km, a cruis­ing speed of over 200 km/h, noise emis­sions reduced by a fac­tor of four com­pared with a tra­di­tion­al heli­copter and up to 80% less CO2, ATEA has eight rotors built into the wings, offer­ing enhanced safe­ty from full redun­dan­cy.