Volocopter raises additional $182 million in second financing round

Volo­copter has raised an addi­tion­al $182 mil­lion in its sec­ond fund­ing round with NEOM – the Red Sea’s smart, cog­ni­tive region project – and GLy Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment of Hong Kong hav­ing joined Volocopter’s investor base. This will car­ry the com­pa­ny beyond the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its elec­tric pas­sen­ger air­craft, the VoloC­i­ty air taxi.

Volo­copter offers a suite of ful­ly elec­tric air­craft built specif­i­cal­ly for urban mis­sions, which includes devel­op­ing the VoloC­i­ty, VoloRe­gion, and Volo­Drone, and enabling the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture to match — the Volo­Port and VoloIQ.

Volo­copter CEO Dirk Hoke said: “Attract­ing NEOM And GLy as investors is a great suc­cess and high­lights our pole posi­tion in the com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion race. This is the key require­ment to launch­ing com­mer­cial oper­a­tions and start­ing to gen­er­ate rev­enue.”

Volo­copter is a UAM leader, with over ten years of devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence and upward of 1,500 suc­cess­ful test flights to its name. As the first and only elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) com­pa­ny to receive Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) from the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA), Volo­copter expects to launch its first com­mer­cial air taxi routes in the next two years in megac­i­ties like Sin­ga­pore, Rome, Paris, and the NEOM region.

Volo­copter CCO Chris­t­ian Bauer added: “Rais­ing over $180 mil­lion despite the gen­er­al­ly tense eco­nom­ic cli­mate high­lights Volocopter’s robust tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy and its ongo­ing progress toward achiev­ing mar­ket readi­ness.”

Volo­copter and NEOM signed a joint ven­ture com­pa­ny in Decem­ber 2021 with a view to inte­grat­ing the VoloC­i­ty air taxi and the Volo­Drone into NEOM’s sus­tain­able, smart, and seam­less­ly con­nect­ed mobil­i­ty sys­tems.

NEOM head of mobil­i­ty Flo­ri­an Lennert com­ment­ed: “Build­ing on our suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with Volo­copter, we believe it is the best part­ner to build an advanced air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem in NEOM.”

GLy is backed by Geely Hold­ing, a long-term part­ner of Volo­copter in a joint ven­ture to bring UAM to Chi­na with its high den­si­ty of megac­i­ties, and which is expect­ed to become one of the largest mar­kets for elec­tric air taxis.

GLy Cap­i­tal Co-CEO Hrvo­je Krka­lo con­clud­ed: “Volocopter’s vision encom­pass­es indus­tri­al short- and medi­um-range com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger appli­ca­tions to bring effi­cien­cy to the way we move around our cities.”

In March, Volo­copter raised $170 mil­lion in its Series E financ­ing round, led by South Kore­an investor WP Invest­ment at a pre-mon­ey val­u­a­tion of $1.7 bil­lion.

Volo­copter rais­es $170 mil­lion in first sign­ing of its Series E Financ­ing Round, to help with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its eVTOL air­craft

In Feb­ru­ary, Volo­copter and Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal Group LLC (ACG) agreed to devel­op financ­ing solu­tions for the sale of eVTOL air­craft for up to USD $1 bil­lion.

Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal Group to finance Volocopter’s fleet of eVTOL air­craft for up to $1 bil­lion, help­ing to ful­fil cus­tomer demand for UAM ser­vices