Volocopter

eVTOL / air mobilityGermany

New to Unitard

💀 Dead / Bankrupt

Peak $1.7 BillionToday

~-95%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2021
📈
Peak valuation
$1.7 Billion ’23
💔
Became a Unitard
Dec 2024
💸
Last valuation
Wiped out

Capital raised

$750M

Total raised

$153K/day

Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 13.5 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: Axios / Aerotime / press

Current status

Insolvency (Dec 2024)

The rise & fall

7 moments · 2011–2025

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2011

Founded after a flight on a yoga ball

German founders fly the world's first crewed electric multicopter — the pilot perched on an exercise ball — and set out to build air taxis.

Wikipedia

2021

Joins the unicorn club

Funding rounds push the air-taxi developer past a $1B valuation as the eVTOL race heats up.

Reuters

2023

The peak: $1.7B$1.7B

A 2023 round values the company at $1.7B as it chases certification and a promised air-taxi debut over Paris.

Reuters

2024

Certification slips, cash runs out

The VoloCity still can't carry paying passengers at scale, and rescue-funding talks come up empty.

Reuters

2022–25

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–25

Employees called it years early: Glassdoor reviews kept noting a company with no revenue, living entirely on investor money. By late 2024 the warnings turned blunt — reviewers described a firm out of cash with no product in service and leaders offering no clear direction.

Dec 2024

Insolvency — joins the Unitard Club 💔

Files at the end of December 2024 — $750M raised, and no paying passengers ever carried at scale.

Reuters

2025

Sold out of insolvency

Diamond Aircraft, part of China's Wanfeng group, takes over the assets to keep the air-taxi project alive.

Reuters

$1.62Bof peak value erased · 13 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Volocopter developed electric vertical-takeoff air taxis and reached a $1.7B valuation in a 2023 round. Certification delays and a cash crunch arrived before it could carry paying passengers at scale. The company filed for insolvency at the end of December 2024.

Source: Reuters; air-taxi developer

Where they went

Dirk Hoke
CEO
President and Chief Executive Officer at Voith Group
LinkedIn ↗
Stephan Wolf
co-founder (conceived the manned multicopter after 25 years in software, including industrial automation at Siemens)
Not on record
Alexander Zosel
co-founder
Not on record
Thomas Senkel
co-founder, designer and builder of the VC1 — and the man who flew the world's first crewed all-electric eVTOL flight in Oct 2011
Not on record