Electric air taxis are drawing billions. E-scooters showed what comes next

Urban mobility startups burned through billions before cities forced a reckoning. Air taxis are following the same funding logic at a greater scale

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Every few years, a new technology promises to solve urban transportation. Bird looked like one of them. The e-scooter company became the fastest startup to reach a $1 billion valuation and went public at $2.3 billion. But it never posted a profitable quarter. The capital arrived before the economics worked, the cities pushed back, and the money ran out. Bird filed for bankruptcy in December 2023, and its assets sold for $145 million.

A new generation of companies is making similar promises about electric air taxis, the small aircraft designed to take off and land vertically in cities. The money flowing into them dwarfs what e-scooters ever attracted.

The question is whether the cycle will repeat.

Unproven economics and outsized capital investment

From 2015 to 2019, almost $7 billion was invested in shared e-scooters and other short-distance electric vehicles, according to McKinsey. The electric air taxi sector has followed the same funding logic at larger scale. Joby Aviation raised $590 million in a single financing round in January 2020, bringing its total to $720 million before going public. Archer Aviation raised $850 million in........

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