AAMG, Zuri VTOL Sign Investment Terms “to Accelerate Hybrid-Electric VTOL Aircraft for Cargo, Defence and Regional Air Mobility”  

It’s Hel­lo Zuri, good­bye Lil­i­um as the Ambi­tious Air Mobil­i­ty Group (AAMG), weary of its wran­glings with the ‘liq­uida­tor’ of the for­mer Ger­man eVTOL com­pa­ny, has jumped ship and wooed a new part­ner, the Czech VTOL firm, Zuri.

Truth be told, AAMG found itself in a bid­ding war with Archer Avi­a­tion, ulti­mate­ly los­ing out on Lil­i­um’s patent port­fo­lio, even though it made a high­er bid at one point. Yet, the insol­ven­cy admin­is­tra­tor ulti­mate­ly chose Archer’s bid cit­ing, once more, a need for secure financ­ing and exe­cu­tion. In their eyes AAMG could not be trust­ed over the forth­com­ing finances.

A press release states, “AAMG and Zuri have signed bind­ing invest­ment terms  to advance the devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and deploy­ment of Zuri’s hybrid-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft plat­form for pas­sen­ger, car­go and defence appli­ca­tions. The invest­ment also sup­ports unmanned and option­al­ly pilot­ed vari­ants devel­oped for car­go and defence oper­a­tions.” 

The invest­ment amount has not been dis­closed.

PODCAST: ZURI’s Michal Illich on why its hybrid VTOL air­craft can help unlock region­al air mobil­i­ty trav­el

The agree­ment estab­lish­es a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion in three pri­ma­ry areas:- 

: Strate­gic invest­ment — AAMG joins as a long-term indus­tri­al and finan­cial part­ner sup­port­ing Zuri’s hybrid-elec­tric air­craft pro­gram and busi­ness growth. 

: Air­craft orders — AAMG will place for­ward orders for unmanned and option­al­ly pilot­ed air­craft for logis­tics, car­go, and defence oper­a­tions. 

: Pro­gram col­lab­o­ra­tion — Joint ini­tia­tives will focus on accel­er­at­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion readi­ness and prepar­ing for com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion and oper­a­tional deploy­ment.

Michal Illich, CEO of Zuri, com­ment­ed, “AAMG brings not only invest­ment, but also expe­ri­ence and an inter­na­tion­al net­work which strength­ens our abil­i­ty to accel­er­ate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion toward oper­a­tional deploy­ment. This part­ner­ship rein­forces Zuri’s mis­sion to deliv­er sus­tain­able hybrid-elec­tric avi­a­tion across defence and civil­ian mar­kets.” 

Robert Kamp, CEO & Senior Part­ner of AAMG, added, “Zuri’s manned and unmanned plat­forms pro­vide class-lead­ing per­for­mance for both car­go and civil­ian VTOL oper­a­tions. They have a com­pelling vision that max­imis­es the impact of our ver­ti­port net­work and region­al air mobil­i­ty.”

Zuri’s ‘pro­posed fleet’ of VTOLs

Zuri has not com­mit­ted to a time­frame for ser­vice entry of its four-pas­sen­ger air­craft, which uses eight tilt­ing pro­pellers: four on the wing and four on its V‑tail for lift and propul­sion.

It is present­ly design­ing a sec­ond scaled demon­stra­tor of its VTOL air­craft.  Wing man­u­fac­ture is already under­way and is sched­uled to com­plete next month. An unmanned first flight is aimed for the last quar­ter of 2026 fol­low­ing ground tri­als in the sum­mer.

For more infor­ma­tion 

https://www.zuri.com

https://stayambitious.world

(Top image: Graph­ic image of Zuri VTOL in flight)

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