China: Volant Aerotech Attracts “USD14 million Investment” in Latest Series A Funding Round

On Tues­day (June 11th), Volant Aerotech, yet anoth­er emerg­ing Chi­na-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, announced it had attract­ed USD14 mil­lion (100 mil­lion yuan) in a lat­est series A Fund­ing Round, reports Chi­na eVTOL News. This marks Volant’s sixth finan­cial event since the com­pa­ny was found­ed in June 2021 and the third hun­dred-mil­lion-yuan financ­ing round com­plet­ed in 2024.

The back­ing was led by QF Cap­i­tal along­side Anshan Invest­ment, Dun­hong Assets and exist­ing investor Micro Light Ven­ture. Gengx­in Cap­i­tal act­ed as the exclu­sive advi­sor. 

The lat­est cash injec­tion fol­lows pre­vi­ous rounds in March and April. The funds will be used to facil­i­tate the advance­ment of Volan­t’s VE25 X1 ver­i­fi­ca­tion air­craft test­ing and AC101 prod­uct air­craft devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing, with the aim of join­ing the com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger mar­ket no lat­er than 2027.

The VE25 X1 is a full-scale pas­sen­ger eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor aimed at val­i­dat­ing the aircraft’s aero­dy­nam­ics, sys­tems and con­fig­u­ra­tion. It fea­tures eight VTOL pro­pellers for lift (with redun­dan­cy built-in); two tail-mount­ed push­er pro­pellers for for­ward flight; and a fixed skid land­ing gear. The design serves as a basis for the pro­duc­tion mod­el intend­ed for advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty, mede­vac mis­sions and air car­go. Assem­bly of the VT-25 X1 began in June 2022 in Yix­ing, Jiang­su Province.

The Volant Team (Cred­it: Volant Aerotech)

The com­pa­ny unveiled the VE25 X1 in Sep­tem­ber, 2022 and con­duct­ed a ground-based pow­er tri­al two months lat­er. In Jan­u­ary, 2023, Volant announced the suc­cess­ful maid­en flight of the VE25 X1 pro­to­type, which was teth­ered dur­ing the flight.

The com­pa­ny has signed strate­gic coop­er­a­tion agree­ments and LOIs (Let­ters of Intent) with sev­en com­pa­nies, for over 700 air­craft with a poten­tial order amount worth over USD2 bil­lion. Orders cov­er six eVTOL appli­ca­tions: Low-alti­tude sight­see­ing, train­ing, short-dis­tance trans­porta­tion, freight trans­porta­tion, emer­gency res­cue and urban trav­el.

These poten­tial pur­chas­es come from: Chi­na South­ern Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion; AVIC Chi­na Avi­a­tion Res­cue and Emer­gency; Yalie Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Res­cue and Emer­gency; Huax­ia Fei­di Tech­nol­o­gy; and Ruo­hang Inaus­tral Tech­nol­o­gy Group.

Huang Xiaofei, Senior VP of Volant, com­ment­ed, “Up to five air­craft are planned for pro­duc­tion next year along­side com­mer­cial tri­al runs with Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion aimed for as ear­ly as 2026. Once TC is gained, Volant intends to com­mence pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing oper­a­tions.” 

In April, the com­pa­ny con­clud­ed a new round of test flight train­ing in Zigong, a pre­fec­ture-lev­el city in Sichuan, South­west­ern Chi­na. This marked the inau­gur­al for­mal flight train­ing ses­sion for the VE25X1 after being trans­port­ed in its entire­ty.

Along­side many ground bal­last exer­cis­es, rotor maneu­vers and low-glide for­ward flight drills, the tri­als also includ­ed a reval­i­da­tion of the sin­gle pro­peller’s sta­bil­i­ty post-fail­ure, ensur­ing the air­craft’s safe flight after reassem­bly.

For more infor­ma­tion

http://www.volantaerotech.com/en

(Images: Volan­t’s VE25 X1 Dur­ing Recent Tri­als)

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