China's First Range-Extended, Fully Tilt-Rotor eVTOL Startup Flight Era Raises Seed and Angel Rounds Led by Unity Ventures | Unity Portfolio
Positioning itself against Joby, aiming to be the first to achieve commercial eVTOL deployment.
"Flight Era" announced that it completed a seed round led by Unity Ventures and an angel round from industrial investor Nova Star successively at the end of August last year, raising tens of millions of RMB within just three months of its founding.
As the first domestic company to adopt a "range-extended + fully tiltrotor" configuration for eVTOL, Flight Era benchmarks itself against global industry leader Joby, focusing on an efficient, safe, and scalable commercial aircraft technology path, and is committed to being the first to achieve commercial eVTOL deployment in China.
The company has now officially launched its Pre-A funding round, targeting the key milestones of its first aircraft rolling off the production line in April 2026 and its maiden flight in the first half of the year.
Dual IP Advantage, Building Core Competitive Moats in the Low-Altitude Economy
Flight Era Technology Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise focused on advanced eVTOL aircraft R&D, manufacturing, and application services, concentrating on the development and production of intelligent electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
Positioning itself as the "Tesla of the skies," and as the first domestic company to adopt a range-extended + fully tiltrotor configuration for eVTOL, Flight Era innovatively integrates a range-extended system with a fully tiltrotor configuration, dedicated to building heavy-payload, long-endurance eVTOL products. It provides excellent aerial platforms for urban air mobility scenarios and the low-altitude economy industry, accelerating the leap from "ground transportation" to the "flight era."
Benchmarking against industry leader Joby, the company is fully committed to technology implementation and airworthiness certification, striving to become a benchmark enterprise as the "Chinese Joby, first to achieve commercial eVTOL deployment."
The company's core team brings together top domestic aviation research and technical experts, with a backbone of technical veterans from a major aviation industry host institute. All members are graduates of China's premier aeronautics, astronautics, and aviation universities, with solid professional foundations.
Founder Debiao Li has been deeply engaged in the aviation industry for nearly 20 years, with complete development experience across multiple military and civilian aircraft programs. He combines technical R&D expertise from state-owned enterprises with practical market-oriented operations experience from private enterprises, excelling at translating cutting-edge technologies into airworthiness-compliant engineered products. This forms a core competitiveness of "national team technical DNA + market-oriented operational capability."
Furthermore, the founder and core team possess rare and deep design expertise in both fixed-wing and helicopter domains, along with the highest standards of safety cognition, with a rich product portfolio. With full-process engineering development capabilities in aircraft design, manufacturing, and flight testing, as well as aircraft development and complex systems engineering capabilities, they have laid a solid technical foundation and talent support for the smooth advancement of the F2500 range-extended fully tiltrotor aircraft program.
Two-Year Blueprint: Phased Breakthroughs, Establishing a Domestic Industry Benchmark by 2027
Flight Era has formulated a clear three-year development plan, advancing product R&D, market expansion, and global layout in phases.
In 2026, Flight Era will focus on F2500ERF prototype flight testing and market breakthrough, with core objectives including the completion of multiple prototype aircraft, maiden flight and tiltrotor mode transition verification, and concurrent airworthiness application submission.
On the capital front, it will continue advancing funding rounds, accumulating financing at scale to achieve steady valuation growth. On the market front, it will deeply engage core customers in cargo transport, general aviation travel, and emergency rescue, actively expanding market-oriented and government-related projects, striving for breakthrough revenue milestones, rapidly joining the industry's first tier, and becoming a core participant in the low-altitude economy赛道.
In 2027, Flight Era plans to achieve key breakthroughs: continue推进 F2500ERF airworthiness certification to reach critical milestones, complete production of multiple initial units, achieve China's first range-extended + fully tiltrotor eVTOL operations, and concurrently launch development of the 2.5-ton-class manned range-extended fully tiltrotor eVTOL (F2500ER).
On market and technology fronts, Flight Era will steadily expand F2500ERF order volume, achieve steady revenue growth, increase R&D investment and patent filings, and continuously strengthen its technical moat. Through dual leadership in technology and commercialization, it aims to establish itself as an industry benchmark in China's low-altitude economy eVTOL sector.
Source: Xiang Ge on Drones and Low-Altitude Industry Chain
