Sources: Larry Page has invested over $100M in flying-car startup Zee.Aero, also backs competing firm Kitty Hawk
With Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, the Google co-founder looks to the skies. — Three years ago, Silicon Valley developed a fleeting infatuation with a startup called Zee.Aero.
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2016, Bloomberg reported that Google co-founder Larry Page had personally put more than $100 million into Zee.Aero while simultaneously bankrolling a competing flying-car firm, Kitty Hawk — a two-horse race funded by one of the world's richest individuals rather than by venture syndicates. The related coverage traces what that bet bought: a certification-testing agreement with the New Zealand government in 2018, then mounting trouble as sources suggested Kitty Hawk had ceded control of its self-flying taxi program to Boeing by late 2019.
The endgame is already on record: after acquiring drone-software maker 3D Robotics in 2021, Kittyhawk announced it would wind down entirely in 2022. That makes this 2016 funding story the opening chapter of a completed arc — one useful for judging whether personal-billionaire capital can carry an aviation startup through certification.
First-order effects
- Page's dual backing turns Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk into internally competing bets, with both firms vying for the same patron's capital instead of facing outside investors' discipline.
- Kitty Hawk gains a funding base deep enough to pursue official certification channels, as its later New Zealand government agreement showed.
Second-order effects
- When progress stalled, the program's direction shifted from founder-funded to incumbent-led: sources indicated Kitty Hawk handed control of its self-flying taxi effort to Boeing, trading autonomy for aerospace engineering muscle.
- The 2021 purchase of 3D Robotics — bringing co-founder Chris Anderson in as COO — signals a pivot from building aircraft to leaning on drone software expertise as the hardware path proved costly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ultra-wealthy patrons can fund a decade of experimentation but cannot substitute for regulatory certification or aerospace-scale partners — explaining why the field consolidates around incumbents like Boeing rather than independent startups.
- The wind-down sets a cautionary benchmark for the current wave of eVTOL and air-taxi ventures: nine figures of patient personal capital was spent over roughly twelve years without producing a surviving company.
The trend: Personal-billionaire-funded flying-car startups are giving way to partnerships with established aerospace players, as certification costs and timelines exceed what even the deepest private checkbooks can sustain alone.