Advanced Air Mobility pioneer Lilium has ceased operations and laid off almost all its more than 1,000 employees after failing to raise the capital it needed to continue. The German company, which stunned the aviation industry 11 years ago with its electric multi-rotor design and audacious plan to introduce short-hop inner-city-to-inner-city service, raised more than a billion dollars in private investment before going public in 2021. It only attracted two orders for a total of 320 aircraft.
Lilium entered insolvency in October and was unable to attract the investment it needed to continue. “After 10 years and 10 months, it is a sad fact that Lilium has ceased operations,” Tech Crunch reported CEO Patrick Nathen as saying in a social media post. “The company that Daniel [Wiegand], Sebastian [Born], Matthias [Meiner] and I founded can no longer pursue our shared belief in more environmentally friendly aviation. This is heartbreaking and the timing feels painfully ironic,” wrote Nathen.
