Joby welcomes $100 million investment expanding its partnership with SK Telecom

Joby Avi­a­tion yes­ter­day announced that SK Tele­com, South Korea’s lead­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, is mak­ing an equi­ty invest­ment of $100 mil­lion in Joby, as part of an expand­ed part­ner­ship between the two com­pa­nies.

The agree­ment paves the way for Joby to par­tic­i­pate along­side SKT in Korea’s ‘K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge’, a phased demon­stra­tion pro­gram led by the Kore­an Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port designed to fos­ter the adop­tion of aer­i­al rideshar­ing in Korea.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “Our part­ner­ship with SKT places Joby in the best pos­si­ble posi­tion to cap­i­talise on the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed by the Kore­an mar­ket, where we con­tin­ue to see a strong dri­ve from the gov­ern­ment to realise aer­i­al rideshar­ing.

“We are grate­ful for SKT’s com­mit­ment to Joby and look for­ward to work­ing with them as we devel­op a trans­for­ma­tion­al air taxi ser­vice for Korea.”

SKT CEO Ryu Young-sang added: “We will do our utmost to pro­mote the demon­stra­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty in Korea, based on our part­ner­ship with Joby Avi­a­tion. This tech­nol­o­gy promis­es to great­ly reduce cus­tomers’ trav­el time and we look for­ward to turn­ing Korea into a mobil­i­ty pow­er­house.”

SK Tele­com has been lead­ing the growth of the mobile indus­try since 1984. SK Tele­com is trans­form­ing into an AI com­pa­ny by focussing on dri­ving inno­va­tion in areas of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, media, AI, meta­verse, cloud and con­nect­ed intel­li­gence.

Joby and SKT first signed a strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2022, which was expand­ed to include TMAP, South Korea’s largest mobil­i­ty plat­form, in May 2022. Yesterday’s invest­ment is expect­ed to lead to the devel­op­ment of fur­ther part­ner­ships across the mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem in Korea, led by SKT.

TMAP joins Joby Avi­a­tion and SK Tele­com to help bring air taxi ser­vices to South Korea