December 16, 2020
YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:
Jeff Bezos Teams With Bill Gates to Back Electric Plane Startup ZeroAvia (Sissi Cao, 12/16/20, NY Observer)
While Jeff Bezos' ex-wife McKenzie Scott flooded news headlines on Wednesday for donating over $4 billion to hundreds of charitable organizations, the Amazon CEO himself made a quite investment in a British startup that successfully tested the world's first hydrogen passenger plane three months ago.ZeroAvia, a company founded in 2017 to develop commercial-grade aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells, raised $21.4 million from Amazon's Climate Pledge fund, as well as Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Shell Ventures, in its latest fundraising round closed this week.The startup also secured separate funding of $16.3 million from the U.K. government and struck a partnership with British Airways to help the airline transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen energy sources.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2020 5:30 PM