Six lost, three found.
Since Kittyhawk shut down in September 2022, at least six well-funded personal-aerial-vehicle and eVTOL companies have failed, entered insolvency, or fundamentally pivoted:
• Kittyhawk, dissolved September 2022. Roughly $100M+ from Larry Page. Three parallel aircraft programs, one unified commercial customer, zero commercial revenue at scale. • Lilium, bankruptcy filing 2024. Assets sold. Public spinout via SPAC, capital-intensive certification path, insufficient bridge to first commercial flight. • Volocopter, insolvency 2024; sold to Wanfeng Auto Holding Group for approximately €10M. A ~99.5% haircut from a $1B+ peak valuation. • Terrafugia, Geely-owned; effectively dormant in the US since 2022. • SkyDrive (Japan), pivoted from consumer PAV to cargo VTOL. The airframe survived; the consumer-PAV thesis did not. • Aska, 4-seat roadable; deliveries slipped from 2025 target into 2027+ per company communications.
In the same window, three companies emerged at commercial scale by publicly-observable measures:
• Jetson, approximately $100M in refundable deposits; first customer shipments 2023. Delivery velocity remains the credibility test the reservation cohort watches. • Zapata, first US Flight Center operational Q1 2026 in Las Vegas. Turbine-hybrid AirScooter airframe (co-developed with ONERA) clears the 120-minute endurance window pure-electric competitors cannot yet reach. • LIFT Aircraft, USAF Agility Prime Phase 3 at Eglin AFB (dual-track civilian + military revenue), plus Austin civilian experience center touring the country.
The pattern in the survivor set is not superior airframes. Every one of the three had a specific answer to "who pays what for a first commercial flight" before scaling manufacturing, deposits, ticketed experience, dual civilian/military. The failed set did not.
Read the archive; the numbers themselves are the argument.