AIR Secures “USD23 Million in Series A Funding” to Accelerate U.S Expansion, “Deliver Multi-Domain eVTOLs at Scale”

On the back of the MOSAIC announce­ment last week, start-up AIR is a good exam­ple of an eVTOL com­pa­ny that will great­ly ben­e­fit from this rul­ing. There­fore, it is of no sur­prise to learn that the com­pa­ny, who devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures autonomous car­go and per­son­al fly­ing air­craft, has recent­ly raised USD23 mil­lion in a Series A Fund­ing Round, reports a press release. 

The release explains, “The round was led by Entrée Cap­i­tal, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Dr. Shmuel Har­lap, renowned busi­ness­man and an ini­tial backer of Mobil­eye, who has also been an investor in AIR since its incep­tion. The fund­ing will enable the com­pa­ny to fur­ther scale its eVTOL air­craft pro­duc­tion in sup­port of a grow­ing num­ber of pur­chase orders and accel­er­ate its U.S expan­sion efforts.”

Rani Plaut, CEO and co-Founder of AIR, com­ment­ed, “We’re proud to have demon­strat­ed our oper­a­tional suc­cess, while gen­er­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant rev­enues in the eVTOL space. Entrée Capital’s back­ing and knowl­edge, we help us deliv­er our advanced air mobil­i­ty solu­tions to the mar­ket even faster than before.”

AIR has already ful­filled ini­tial air­craft deliv­er­ies to its first logis­tics cus­tomer in 2023, mark­ing the start of com­mer­cial deploy­ment.

The per­son­al-use AIR ONE eVTOL (images: AIR)

The company’s  uncrewed car­go eVTOL is designed “to meet the grow­ing demand for effi­cient, adapt­able and scal­able air trans­porta­tion solu­tions in indus­tries such as car­go deliv­ery, dis­as­ter response, con­test­ed logis­tics, and remote access oper­a­tions,” says the release. “Its unique aero­dy­nam­ics allow it to reach 100-mile range at speeds of up to 120 knots. Its intu­itive ground han­dling pro­ce­dures and quick load­ing capa­bil­i­ties accom­mo­date a vari­ety of car­go types, while its inno­v­a­tive design allows for seam­less inte­gra­tion into exist­ing logis­tics work­flows.”

The eVTOL has a 550-pound pay­load capac­i­ty and 70 cubic feet of car­go space.

Avi Eyal, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Entrée Cap­i­tal, remarked, “We have tracked AIR from its ini­tial found­ing to the point where it has achieved full flight oper­a­tions across com­mer­cial (logis­tics), con­sumer and defence appli­ca­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “The plat­form design has mul­ti­ple modal­i­ties and will rev­o­lu­tionise exist­ing use cas­es for air trans­porta­tion giv­en its low cost, low main­te­nance, ease of use and high endurance and safe­ty.” 

Adding, “We led the invest­ment in AIR giv­en our belief in its vision and being the only OEM in its cat­e­go­ry that is deliv­er­ing a real prod­uct today, years ahead of any rival.”

Along­side the car­go mod­el, AIR’s pilot­ed two-seater AIR ONE offers per­son­al mobil­i­ty with a focus on per­for­mance and com­fort. It shares “a uni­fied DNA design” with its autonomous car­go mod­el that allows both to ben­e­fit from cross-plat­form upgrades. 

They fea­ture a fold­ing wing mech­a­nism, allow­ing the air­craft to be parked in a stan­dard car-size park­ing space, enhanc­ing real-world prac­ti­cal­i­ty and ease of use.

Avi Eyal (cred­it: Sarah Raanan Pho­tog­ra­phy)

AIR has suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed all phas­es of flight with its full-scale plat­form, includ­ing exten­sive night­time Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) autonomous, car­go oper­a­tions. The com­pa­ny estab­lished a U.S‑based oper­a­tions cen­tre to sup­port ongo­ing FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts and to col­lab­o­rate with the U.S. Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime pro­gram.

AIR has 15 autonomous car­go eVTOLs ear­marked for deliv­ery in the com­ing year, along­side over 2,500 pre-orders for its pilot­ed, per­son­al use, AIR ONE.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.airev.aero

(Top image: Air Autonomous Car­go Air­craft)

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