Flying taxi CEO is a billionaire again after stock rallies to all-time high

[NEW YORK] Four years after a much-hyped Spac (special purpose acquisition company) deal followed by a swift collapse, shares of US flying taxi company Joby Aviation have rallied to an all-time high, lifting the value of its founder’s stake to more than US$1 billion.

Chief executive officer JoeBen Bevirt, 51, owns a 12 per cent stake in the California-based air-mobility company worth US$1.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The value of his holding has more than doubled since Apr 8, when the stock hit its low for the year. The shares were up 10 per cent to US$13.92 at 2.24 pm in New York trading.

A spokesperson for Santa Cruz, California-based Joby Aviation declined to comment on Bevirt’s net worth or the company’s performance.

Interest in Joby Aviation’s eVTOL aircraft, shorthand for electric vertical takeoff and landing, has surged since the company completed a piloted test flight last month in Dubai.

That followed US President Donald Trump signing an executive order establishing a federal pilot programme for the technology amid increased attention for the industry from the defence sector.

“The administration has made air taxis a very high priority,” Bevirt said in a Mar 17 interview with Bloomberg Television. “We are just thrilled to be seeing such incredible momentum on the DoD side for this industry.”

Bevirt’s wealth briefly climbed above US$1 billion immediately after Joby Aviation’s public debut via a Spac in August 2021, as investors bid up the share price. By the end of that year, the company’s stock had tumbled more than 45 per cent from its opening day high.

At the time it went public, Joby Aviation did not have a completed product, instead hoping investors would buy into its promise of operating a commercial fleet of flying taxis by 2024. That fleet is still in the future, as is its first paying customer, but a flurry of good news has spurred the recent rally.

Fellow electric-aircraft maker Archer Aviation in June predicted that defence contracts could become the biggest part of its business. And Joby Aviation announced on Tuesday that it planned to double production capacity at its main plant.

The company says that its electric aircraft, which take off and land vertically and do not require a runway, are 100 times quieter than a helicopter and can travel at speeds of up to 322 kilometres per hour.

Joby Aviation plans to launch flights from lower Manhattan to John F Kennedy International Airport, which will take just seven minutes and be cost-competitive with an Uber Black, Bevirt said in a May 2024 interview with Bloomberg.

Joby Aviation is the fourth company Bevirt founded after earning mechanical engineering degrees from the University of California, Davis and Stanford. His previous ventures included Velocity11, a maker of robotic laboratory systems, and Joby, which manufactures the GorillaPod camera tripod. BLOOMBERG