Joby Aviation completes business merger with Reinvent Technology Partners and begins publicly trading on New York Stock Exchange

Joby Avi­a­tion has com­plet­ed its busi­ness merg­er acqui­si­tion with Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners, becom­ing the first eVTOL air­craft com­pa­ny to be pub­licly list­ed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Com­pa­ny founder and CEO JoeBen Bivert cel­e­brat­ed this mile­stone with employ­ees yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) as the team rang the open­ing bell to sig­nal the start of RTP shares trad­ing under the tick­er for the com­bined com­pa­ny, JOBY. Addi­tion­al­ly, a full-scale pro­to­type of Joby’s eVTOL air­craft was put on dis­play out­side the New York Stock Exchange in Man­hat­tan for the gen­er­al pub­lic to view.

Com­ment­ing on the achieve­ment, Bevirt said: “Avi­a­tion con­nects the world in crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant ways but today it does that at the expense of our plan­et. By tak­ing Joby pub­lic we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve a renais­sance in avi­a­tion, mak­ing emis­sions-free flight a part of every­day life. This is our generation’s moon­shot moment, and at Joby we’re proud to be lean­ing in.”

This trans­ac­tion val­ues Joby at $4.5 bil­lion enter­prise val­ue, with pro­ceeds raised plus cash on the bal­ance sheet as of March 31, 2021 equal­ing approx­i­mate­ly $1.6 bil­lion. The pro­ceeds are expect­ed to fund Joby through ini­tial com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2024.

Joby’s eVTOL air­craft is on course to achieve cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with the FAA and can trav­el 150 miles on a sin­gle change at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour. It is able to trans­port a pilot and four pas­sen­gers.

Lead­ing up to being a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, Joby has since com­plet­ed what is believed to be the ‘longest eVTOL air­craft flight’, which saw its pro­to­type fly more than 154 miles as part of its ongo­ing test flight cam­paign.

It has also demon­strat­ed the air­craft’s low noise com­pared to oth­er con­ven­tion­al heli­copters and air­planes with a use­ful video.

While Joby is the first com­pa­ny to go pub­lic, Archer, Lil­i­um and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space have all announced sim­i­lar com­bi­na­tion merg­ers with Atlas Crest, Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp and Broad­stone Acqui­si­tion Corp, respec­tive­ly.

Reid Hoff­man, LinkedIn Co-Founder and Co-Lead Direc­tor of RTP, added, “With its advanced tech­nol­o­gy, we believe Joby is ‘Tes­la meets Uber in the air’ and the clear leader in the eVTOL and aer­i­al ride-shar­ing space. We believe Joby is well-posi­tioned with cap­i­tal to be the first com­pa­ny to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

“Clos­ing this busi­ness com­bi­na­tion accel­er­ates Joby’s roadmap, and we look for­ward to sup­port­ing JoeBen and Joby’s world-class team in exe­cut­ing on their vision.”