Zuri’s oversubscribed Pre-Series A fundraising round raises €4.4 million, helping to advance its hybrid VTOL aircraft

Czech start­up Zuri has raised more than €4 mil­lion in its recent­ly con­clud­ed pre-Series A fund­ing round.

Ini­tial­ly tar­get­ed at €1.5 mil­lion, the round was over­sub­scribed near­ly three­fold, ulti­mate­ly rais­ing €4.4 mil­lion. The invest­ment has already been received and reg­is­tered in the Com­mer­cial Reg­is­ter, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in Zuri’s mis­sion to rede­fine Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty with sus­tain­able, inno­v­a­tive flight solu­tions.

Michal Illich, Zuri’s founder exclu­sive­ly revealed details about the lat­est fundrais­ing at eVTOL Insights’ Europe Con­fer­ence in Lon­don last month.

Speak­ing in more detail about the announce­ment, he said: “This remark­able lev­el of sup­port from our investors rein­forces Zuri’s mis­sion and momen­tum. With the funds raised, we can now con­fi­dent­ly accel­er­ate the next stage of our devel­op­ment — build­ing our next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, TD 2.0.”

Next-Gen­er­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Demon­stra­tor, TD 2.0 Zuri’s next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant leap for­ward in hybrid VTOL air­craft design.

Build­ing on the suc­cess of its first-gen­er­a­tion, 11-meter demon­stra­tor, which has already com­plet­ed flight test­ing, TD 2.0 will deliv­er ground­break­ing advance­ments in three key areas:

• Hybrid Pow­er­train: Inte­grat­ing a hybrid propul­sion sys­tem com­bin­ing the best of
  elec­tric and inter­nal com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies to deliv­er extend­ed range, oper­a­tional
  flex­i­bil­i­ty, and reduced envi­ron­men­tal impact.

• Full Flight Mode Capa­bil­i­ty: Zuri’s large-scale demon­stra­tor will oper­ate in all flight
  modes — ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL), tran­si­tion, and cruise — thanks to the
  incor­po­ra­tion of tiltro­tors. (note: Zuri has suc­cess­ful­ly test­ed these modes in mul­ti­ple
  sub­scale mod­els.)

• Refined Zuri 2.0 Design: The new Zuri 2.0 air­craft design, intro­duces advanced
  tiltro­tors and a reengi­neered tail sec­tion, sig­nif­i­cant­ly improv­ing aero­dy­nam­ic effi­cien­cy,
  sta­bil­i­ty, and over­all per­for­mance

Illich added: “With TD 2.0, we’re not just mak­ing incre­men­tal improve­ments — we’re redefin­ing what’s pos­si­ble in VTOL mobil­i­ty. This phase of devel­op­ment will demon­strate the poten­tial of our hybrid con­cept, bring­ing us one step clos­er to safe, effi­cient, sus­tain­able, and on-demand mid-range trav­el.”

This invest­ment round was led by Jan Bar­ta, Gen­er­al Part­ner of Pale Fire Cap­i­tal (PFC), a lead­ing PE firm with a diverse port­fo­lio span­ning tech­nol­o­gy, ener­gy and glob­al mar­kets.

PFC has been a long­stand­ing sup­port­er of ini­tia­tives focused on edu­ca­tion, free­dom, and democ­ra­cy, align­ing close­ly with Zuri’s mis­sion to rede­fine sus­tain­able and inno­v­a­tive Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty.

Bar­ta said: “I have been watch­ing Michal’s lev­el of per­sis­tence for the last sev­er­al years. Advanc­ing a large VTOL project and being cap­i­tal con­strained the whole time was an immense chal­lenge and Michal nev­er gave up. Those are true qual­i­ties of real founders.

“This fund­ing will now allow Zuri to scale up quick­ly and one can say, actu­al­ly in the lit­er­al sense, the sky is tru­ly the lim­it here.”

Pale Fire Cap­i­tal was Zuri’s very first investor back in 2018, so its Gen­er­al Partner’s fol­low-up invest­ment under­scores the long-term trust in and sup­port for Zuri’s vision of advanc­ing hybrid avi­a­tion.

In addi­tion to Barta’s invest­ment, this round includ­ed con­tri­bu­tions from notable angel investors, such as Boris Ren­s­ki (US founder of Free­dom­Fi and co-founder of Miran­tis), Matej Turek’s 10X fund, and a group of investors from Europe and the USA, fur­ther val­i­dat­ing Zuri’s glob­al appeal and mar­ket poten­tial.

To sup­port this ambi­tious next phase, Zuri is expand­ing its team to accel­er­ate progress toward deliv­er­ing hybrid VTOL solu­tions.

The com­pa­ny is hir­ing across mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines, includ­ing aero­space design, project man­age­ment, elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing, and soft­ware devel­op­ment. The goal is to attract top-tier tal­ent from Europe and beyond to help bring Zuri’s trans­for­ma­tive vision for the future of Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty to life.

Found­ed in 2017, Zuri aims to rev­o­lu­tionise Advanced Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty with hybrid VTOL air­craft pow­ered by Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion Fuel (SAF). By com­bin­ing ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ties with effi­cient wing-borne flight, Zuri says its cut­ting-edge design pro­vides a sus­tain­able, high-per­for­mance solu­tion for point-to-point, mid-range air trav­el.