Lilium welcomes Baillie Gifford as latest investor for its air taxi service

Ger­man air taxi start-up Lil­i­um has secured an invest­ment worth $35 mil­lion from Bail­lie Gif­ford, extend­ing its recent fund­ing round for its Lil­i­um Jet air taxi to more than $275 mil­lion.

The news comes less than three months after Lil­i­um received $240m in addi­tion­al fund­ing from exist­ing investors includ­ing Atom­i­co, Freigeist, LGT and Ten­cent, who led the invest­ment round.

And with a total invest­ment to date of more than $375m, these lat­est funds also see Lil­i­um push fur­ther away from the com­pe­ti­tion as it aims to have a ful­ly oper­a­tional ser­vice by 2025.

Com­ment­ing on the new invest­ment, Christo­pher Del­brück, Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “Bail­lie Gif­ford is one of the world’s most influ­en­tial tech investors and their com­mit­ment to Lil­i­um rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant vote of con­fi­dence in both our phys­i­cal prod­uct and our busi­ness case.

“We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with Bail­lie Gif­ford as we seek to bring emis­sions-free, region­al air mobil­i­ty to the mar­ket as ear­ly as 2025.

“The funds raised dur­ing this round give us the secu­ri­ty to weath­er the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape we see around us and we’re grate­ful to be able to stay ful­ly focused on our mis­sion.”

Bail­lie Gif­ford is known for its track record of invest­ing in high-impact tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies such as Ama­zon, Tes­la, Airbnb, Spo­ti­fy and SpaceX.

By becom­ing an investor, the invest­ment man­age­ment part­ner­ship will fur­ther sup­port the devel­op­ment of Lil­i­um’s five-seater pro­to­type. They will also under­pin prepa­ra­tions for ser­i­al pro­duc­tion in the com­pa­ny’s new­ly-com­plet­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties.

Michael Pye, Invest­ment Man­ag­er at Bail­lie Gif­ford, added: “We are delight­ed to sup­port the remark­able team at Lil­i­um in their ambi­tion of devel­op­ing a new mode of trans­port.

“While still at an ear­ly stage, we believe this tech­nol­o­gy could have pro­found and far-reach­ing ben­e­fits in a low-car­bon future and we are excit­ed to watch Lilium’s progress in the years ahead.”