Vertical Aerospace announces $205 million in additional funding led by Mudrick Capital Investment and Kouros SA

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has secured $205 mil­lion in addi­tion­al financ­ing to sup­port its path­way to scale pro­duc­tion of its VA-X4 eVTOL air­craft, which is expect­ed to achieve cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by 2024.

The invest­ment has come from Mudrick Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment LP, which will invest $200 mil­lion through con­vert­ible senior secured notes, and Kouros SA, which will pro­vide $5 mil­lion towards Ver­ti­cal’s PIPE along­side Amer­i­can Air­lines, Avolon, Hon­ey­well, Microsoft­’s M12 and Rolls-Royce.

The Notes from Mudrick Cap­i­tal are sub­ject to the com­ple­tion of cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions, includ­ing the pro­posed busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Broad­stone Acqui­si­tion Corp, which will pro­vide financ­ing through Broadstone’s trust account and a $94 mil­lion ful­ly com­mit­ted PIPE. The investor group in the PIPE has recent­ly expand­ed to include Kouros SA, a firm spe­cial­is­ing in invest­ments to decar­bonise trans­port and ener­gy pro­duc­tion.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, CEO and Founder of Ver­ti­cal, said “We are delight­ed to wel­come Mudrick Cap­i­tal and Kouros as new part­ners to Ver­ti­cal Aero­space. Their invest­ments are more expert val­i­da­tion of our tech­nol­o­gy and approach to the excit­ing future of zero emis­sions flight. We look for­ward to work­ing togeth­er in the years to come to bring Urban Air Mobil­i­ty to cities all over the world.”

The net fund­ing require­ment to cer­ti­fy the VA-X4, devel­op a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty, build out Ver­ti­cal’s com­mer­cial plat­form and scale pro­duc­tion is expect­ed to be cir­ca $250 mil­lion.

After the com­ple­tion of the busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Broad­stone and the issuance of the con­vert­ible senior secured notes, Ver­ti­cal expects to have liq­uid­i­ty in excess of this require­ment.

Jason Mudrick. Founder and CIO of Mudrick Cap­i­tal, said: “We are very excit­ed to be part­ner­ing with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space as it exe­cutes on its well-defined plan to cer­ti­fy and pro­duce eVTOL air­craft. The com­pa­ny is led by an excep­tion­al team, devel­op­ing an inno­v­a­tive air­craft, that has cre­at­ed an unri­valled part­ner ecosys­tem, with what we believe is the largest announced con­di­tion­al pre-order book in the indus­try.

“With this invest­ment, the com­pa­ny now has the prop­er cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion to bring elec­tric flight into com­mer­cial oper­a­tion by the mid­dle of this decade and move towards high-scale pro­duc­tion. Ver­ti­cal is on the right side of the move­ment towards Net Zero – cut­ting car­bon by reduc­ing reliance on short-haul flights and oth­er modes of trans­port. This is essen­tial and it is a key con­sid­er­a­tion in our invest­ment.”

Flo­rent Berg­eret, Head of Strat­e­gy and Invest­ments of Kouros France, added: “Kouros SA is thrilled to invest in Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, a pio­neer com­pa­ny lead­ing the way to elec­tric avi­a­tion.”