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Courtesy of Surf Air Mobility
Meet Surf Air Mobility, the Startup Trying To Electrify Air Travel
Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
The airline industry is a notoriously terrible polluter, with large carriers struggling to find ways to limit the more than 915 million tons of carbon emissions produced by their industry each year.
Yet some startups, like Hawthorne-based Surf Air Mobility, are looking to the electrification of air travel as a possible solution. On Wednesday, Surf Air announced it will go public by merging with blank-check company Tuscan Holdings Corp and Florida-based commuter airline Southern Airways, in a deal that values the combined company at $1.42 billion. The transaction is expected to raise up to $467 million, giving Surf Air much-needed capital to expand its vision for a fully electric airline.
Co-founded by CEO Sudhin Shahani and Chief Brand Officer Liam Fayed in 2012, Surf Air is a charter flight service with an electrified twist. Its single-engine, eight-seater Pilatus PC-12 aircraft is capable of a 2,150-mile flight range and a max speed of 330 miles. While that’s not as long nor as fast as most major commercial airplanes, it suits the carrier’s regional flights between local airports across the country, which are available to members who pay a starting rate of $199 per month.
Surf Air has stacked a notable slate of investors and advisors in recent years. Chairman Carl Albert is an airline industry veteran; he was CEO of turboprop charter airline Wings West before it was acquired by American Airlines and also ran manufacturing outfit Fairchild Aircraft for a decade. Other notable investors include billionaire businessman and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, banking heir Alexandre de Rothschild and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, as well as local venture firms M13, Plus Capital and TenOneTen Ventures.
Though Surf Air has been eyeing an IPO since 2020, Shahani told Bloomberg that the startup’s business really took off during the pandemic, when many travelers who could afford charter flights were eager to skip larger, more crowded planes and airports. The newly merged company expects to generate roughly $100 million in revenue across all of its business units in 2022, it said Wednesday. “We’ve grown 50% last year to this year,” Shahani told Bloomberg.
The company aims to electrify all of its regional flights through the development of both an original hybrid and electric powertrain, which it can use to retrofit turboprop aircraft like its fleet of Cessna Grand Caravans and create fully electric planes. It also hopes to expand to more terminals—something that will be aided by the merger with Southern Airways, which serviced 39 cities and 300,000 customers last year.
Surf Air says that if it achieves that vision, it’ll be able to completely neutralize its emissions while reducing operating costs by half. Right now, Surf Air says its hybrid planes in action are producing half the emissions of a standard flight while saving about a quarter of the cost. The company doesn’t have a deadline on when its fully electric powertrain will be ready, but announced a deal Thursday with aircraft developer AeroTEC and propulsion firm Magnix to make more hybrid electric powertrains for its Cessnas, which could speed up the timeline.
Surf Air’s competitors in the realm of flight electrification include Textron, Cape Air and NASA, which started testing electric planes two years ago. Another airline, Hawaiian Air, is invested in a company that makes electric sea gliders, while Boeing is also testing electric planes. According to a recent report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, there are 170 similar projects underway.
“We believe deploying hybrid electric propulsion technology on existing aircraft at scale will be the most significant step we can take toward decarbonization of aviation in this decade,” Shahani said in a statement Wednesday. “We’re at a moment when the increasing consumer demand for faster, affordable, and cleaner regional travel will be met with [Surf Air]’s electrification ecosystem to accelerate the industry’s adoption of green flying.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
Loaded, a Talent Agency for Streamers, Lands $20 Million to Snap Up Gaming Firms
01:57 PM | April 07, 2022
Matryx / 390 images, Pixabay
Loaded, a Los Angeles-based talent and marketing agency focused on gaming brands and creators, has secured a fresh $20 million growth equity round led by L.A. private equity firm Coral Tree Partners.
Loaded works with popular gaming streamers like AnneMunition and Sydeon, as well as large brands like Apple’s Beats and Amazon’s Prime Gaming.
The agency recently shook up its C-suite, elevating chief operating officer Josh Swartz to CEO. It also brought in former FaZe Clan executive Jeff Pabst as its new COO and ex-Riot Games executive Bridget Davidson as president of talent. Coral Tree executives Alan Resnikoff and Henry Shapiro have joined Loaded’s board after the private equity firm’s investment, Axios reported.
Loaded plans to use the new funding to grow its talent business and scoop up other gaming-focused companies, Pabst said on Twitter. Potential acquisition targets include analytics firms as well as Web3- and metaverse-focused companies, Swartz told Axios.
Originally based in Columbus, Ohio, Loaded merged with two other esports firms, Noscope and Catalyst Sports and Media, in 2018 to form gaming group Popdog. At the time, the newly merged company reportedly raised $9 million from investors including Makers Fund and Korea Investment Partners.
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Harri Weber
Harri is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. She previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find her on Twitter and send tips on L.A. startups and venture capital to harrison@dot.la.
The Culver City mobile game unicorn, Scopely, announced Wednesday that Chief Revenue Officer Tim O'Brien has been appointed to the company's board of directors. Since he joined Scopely in 2014, the company has grown from 50 to 800 employees and reached a $1.7 billion valuation.
"My time at Scopely has been the highlight of my professional career, and I'm really proud of the tremendous growth we've achieved," O'Brien told dot.LA in an e-mail. "The business has scaled 35x over these last six years, and I continue to be energized every day to come to work and tackle new challenges with all of my Scopely partners."
Prior to Scopely, O'Brien served as Vice President of worldwide business development at Disney Interactive. Before that he was Vice President of business development at Tapulous, which was acquired by Walt Disney Co. during his tenure.
"Tim has been instrumental in driving our strategy and teams, building the culture and organization upon which Scopely has grown into a global leader in mobile games, including the company's Studio Ecosystem, publishing model, and key IP partnerships with a diverse set of licensors," said Scopely co-CEO & Board Member Javier Ferreira in a press release. "We could not have accomplished what we have the last six years without him, and I am thrilled to formally have his voice on our Board."
O'Brien said it was too soon to know what the effect on COVID-19 would be on the company's upcoming performance, or whether users would be more likely to play video games during times when human contact is discouraged.
"We're continuing to follow the guidelines stipulated by core organizations in each market, including the CDC and the World Health Organization, and have already encouraged employees to work remotely when necessary," O'Brien said. "We also owe it to our players around the world to keep the experiences they love up and running -- a priority every Scopely employee is aligned on."
Last week, Scopely launched Scrabble Go, which O'Brien says will be a key driver of growth.
"It represents a new relationship with Mattel (who owns the rights to the Scrabble brand internationally) and deepens our relationship with Hasbro, our partner on Yahtzee With Buddies -- one of our most successful titles five years post-launch," O'Brien said. "The game reimagines a classic AAA IP that is widely beloved for a broad audience -- from competitive superfans to casual social players."
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Ben Bergman
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
https://twitter.com/thebenbergman
ben@dot.la
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