AeroFugia Raises USD14 million in First Market Financing Round

Chi­na-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, AeroFu­gia, suc­cess­ful­ly raised last week over 100 mil­lion Yuan (close to USD14 mil­lion), to com­plete its first suc­cess­ful mar­ket financ­ing round, report­ed the com­pa­ny via a tweet. The round was led by Tsinghua Hold­ings Cap­i­tal (TH Cap­i­tal).

Aerofu­gia tweet­ed, “Closed A series financ­ing with over 100mn yuan led by TH Cap­i­tal and joined by Oriza­seed, Honghua Avi­a­tion, Sky Soar. Aerofu­gia has been test fly­ing AE200 5‑seat tilt-rotor eVTOL.”

AeroFu­gia is a sub­sidiary of Glob­al Auto­mo­tive Group, Geely, and is a recent addi­tion to the Chi­nese eVTOL indus­try. The fund­ing will pri­mar­i­ly assist the con­tin­ued Research and Devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s AE200 5‑seat tilt-rotor eVTOL Air­craft.

Chi­na: Geely’s Aerofu­gia Unveils eVTOL AE200 Air­craft at BEYOND EXPO

As com­pe­ti­tion hots up in Chi­na with com­pa­nies like EHang, Aut­oFlight, Xpeng, T‑Cab, Volant Aerotech, Pan­tua and MuYu Aero, all vying for a sim­i­lar urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, AeroFu­gia finds itself some­what behind in its devel­op­ment com­pared to a major­i­ty of its com­peti­tors. This financ­ing round is an impor­tant step for­ward.

Of course, with Geely’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in trans­porta­tion, cou­pled with a strate­gic posi­tion­ing, pro­vides a strong back­ing for Aerofu­gia and imme­di­ate­ly places it above its rivals, espe­cial­ly at the sup­ply chain lev­el. This includes bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ers, elec­tric motor and con­trol com­pa­nies and raw mate­r­i­al providers that enable the cre­ation of high-qual­i­ty, sta­ble, and cost-effec­tive prod­ucts. This part­ner­ship with lead­ing auto­mo­tive com­pa­nies is becom­ing a com­mon thread amongst the top eVTOL play­ers.

The lead investor in this first finance round, TH Cap­i­tal, has “16 years of invest­ment expe­ri­ence in advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and high-end equip­ment sec­tors, lead­ing to a ful­ly func­tion­al aero­space indus­tri­al chain. This chain can pow­er Aerofugia’s prod­uct devel­op­ment, air­wor­thi­ness, and sup­ply chain man­age­ment, bridg­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion for down­stream and upstream indus­tri­al col­lab­o­ra­tion,” writes autonews.gasgoo.com.

It con­tin­ues, “TH Cap­i­tal’s sub­sidiary, SINO JET, is the largest busi­ness avi­a­tion com­pa­ny in the Asia-Pacif­ic region. It oper­ates main­stream mod­els from major air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers and boasts a high­ly digi­tised air­craft life­cy­cle man­age­ment sys­tem along with an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al team. This infra­struc­ture will offer sig­nif­i­cant sup­port to the AE200’s con­tin­u­ous air­wor­thi­ness efforts.”

Aerofu­gia, may be behind its rivals now, but it won’t take long for the com­pa­ny to over­take and then dom­i­nate the Chi­nese eVTOL indus­try.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aerofugia.com/

(News Source: https://autonews.gasgoo.com)

(Images: AeroFu­gia)