Just when the world thought that autonomous cars would be the greatest revolution of 21st century, Alphabet Inc.’s CEO and Google’s co-founder Larry Page surprised the world by investing in two flying car startups.
The financing indicates technology executive’s aspiring efforts apart from internet search. Zee.Aero –a startup established almost three years ago and was eventually surrounded by the rumors that it belonged to Google. Later, it turned out that Mr. Larry is owner of Zee.Aero and personally funding the startup which now has approximately 150 workers who test airplane in rural California. Likewise, Page also owns a smaller sized startup dubbed Kitty Hawk that’s developing its own flying car design, according to source familiar with the matter.
Progress in battery and computing technology are making such products highly feasible, still they face major commercial, technical and regulatory obstacles before they start ferrying passengers.
Both organizations are based near Alphabet’s headquarters in the city of Mountain View in California. Previously, Bloomberg reported investments by Mr. Larry in the startups as well as their advancement up till now. The organizations are two out of around 12 companies trying to develop the so-called flying vehicles, which are effectively tiny automatic planes that can land as well as take-off vertically.
The aircraft organizations are personal projects of Mr. Larry and are not associated with Google’s parent Alphabet, another person stated. As per reports by Bloomberg, he has made an investment of more than $100 million in Zee Aero Alone.
His interest in personal planes indicates his wide-ranging ambitions to have an impact on industries outside internet, like Alphabet venture involving autonomous cars, life-extension technology and delivery drones. The patents awarded to Zee.Aero in 2013 show many models for “private aircraft” that includes generally thin fuselages packed between wings on the back and front as well as topped with 8 rotors.
New York Post reported that Zero.Aero which has poached leading talent from organizations such as Boeing, NASA as well as SpaceX has a head office which covers a space of 30,000 sqft. The organization is also running a production facility on a NASA research campus in Mountain View, reported Bloomberg. The other Page’s venture Kitty Hawk employing 12 engineers and has its head office at a distance of around half a mile from Zero.
According to business filings in the last year, President of Kitty Hawk was Sebastian Thrun, the search engine operator’s self-driving program creator and its research unit Google X founder, whose “moonshot” ventures have included robotics as well as artificial intelligence. In other news, as per reports by BBC the Indian government has refused to let the search company collect pictures for its service Street View in the nation after objections were raised by security agencies.
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