Inside the struggles of Larry Page-backed flying car company Kitty Hawk as sources suggest it may have ceded control of its self-flying taxi program to Boeing
Deputy editor for Industry; eyes on the skies — In 2017, success seemed to be just around the corner for Kitty Hawk …
Context & Ripple Effects
Kitty Hawk began as a bet Larry Page made twice over: sources reported his investment of more than $100M in flying-car startup Zee.Aero even as he backed rival Kitty Hawk. By 2018 the company had secured an official certification-testing agreement with the New Zealand government for autonomous planes, and success looked close enough that Forbes framed it as "just around the corner" in 2017.
This report lands mid-arc: sources suggest the struggling company has ceded control of its self-flying taxi program to Boeing — an incumbent with the certification muscle a billionaire-funded startup lacks. The subsequent record bears out the trouble: Kitty Hawk shut down its original Flyer program within six months, bought drone software firm 3D Robotics in 2021, and ultimately announced it would wind down entirely in September 2022.
First-order effects
- Control of the self-flying taxi program reportedly passes from Kitty Hawk and its Page funding to Boeing, making the aerospace giant the decision-maker on a program Kitty Hawk spent nearly a decade building.
Second-order effects
- Boeing gains an urban air mobility entry point without starting from scratch, while Kitty Hawk's New Zealand certification pathway now effectively runs through Boeing rather than through Page's checkbook.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, billionaire-backed air-taxi startups become feedstock for incumbent aerospace consolidation: certification costs and regulatory timelines push even well-funded founders toward handing programs to companies like Boeing that already hold regulator relationships.
The trend: Tech-billionaire-funded air taxi ventures are being absorbed by incumbent aerospace manufacturers as certification demands outrun private capital.