Boom Supersonic lands Saudi investment that takes it over $700M in total funding
Boom Supersonic has landed financial backing from a fund connected to Saudi Arabia’s royal family in a deal the experimental jet company says takes it over $700 million in funding for the business.
Denver-based Boom Supersonic aims to make faster-than-sound passenger jets at the factory it's building at PTI Airport in Greensboro. Bounder and CEO Blake Scholl predicts will revolutionize international travel by cutting trans-oceanic flight times in half.
Last week Boom Supersonic confirmed closing a financing round that included a strategic investment from the NEOM Investment Fund. NIF is a funding offshoot of a Saudi Arabian royal family’s effort to foster economic development, technology innovation and ecological preservation in a swath of northwest Saudi Arabia touching the Red Sea coast.
Details of the investment in Boom, including its size and what other funds may have participated in the round, were not provided. The plane maker’s parent company, legally called Boom Technology Inc., hasn’t officially reported raising an equity investment round since 2020.
Boom Technology filings to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission outline raising equity investment totaling just over $171 million in five investments between 2016 and 2020 but nothing since then.
Boom's total funding was most recently estimated at $208 million by Crunchbase, a digital venture capital database.
The company's announcement of $700 million in funding described the money being both investment and “other forms of capital.” Boom Supersonic termed the agreement with NIF an opportunity "to make the Gulf region dramatically more accessible through the power of supersonic flight.”
Boom Supersonic has landed financial backing from a fund connected to Saudi Arabia’s royal family in a deal the experimental jet company says takes it over $700 million in funding for the business.
Denver-based Boom Supersonic aims to make faster-than-sound passenger jets at the factory it's building at PTI Airport in Greensboro. Bounder and CEO Blake Scholl predicts will revolutionize international travel by cutting trans-oceanic flight times in half.
Last week Boom Supersonic confirmed closing a financing round that included a strategic investment from the NEOM Investment Fund. NIF is a funding offshoot of a Saudi Arabian royal family’s effort to foster economic development, technology innovation and ecological preservation in a swath of northwest Saudi Arabia touching the Red Sea coast.
Details of the investment in Boom, including its size and what other funds may have participated in the round, were not provided. The plane maker’s parent company, legally called Boom Technology Inc., hasn’t officially reported raising an equity investment round since 2020.
Boom Technology filings to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission outline raising equity investment totaling just over $171 million in five investments between 2016 and 2020 but nothing since then.
Boom's total funding was most recently estimated at $208 million by Crunchbase, a digital venture capital database.
Blake Scholl is founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic.
Paul Cordwell, provided by Boom Supersonic
“Our goal is to bring the world closer together through faster flights,” Scholl said in a statement. “We’re excited to collaborate with partners and investors around the globe as we work to realize our shared vision.”
U.S. air carriers United Airlines (Nasdaq: UAL) and American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL), and Japan Airlines, have paid deposits to Boom to reserve Overture planes for future purchase. Boom is also working with Northrop Grumman to develop a military and government version of the supersonic jet.
Saudi fund backs 'bold entrepreneurs'
The NOEM Investment Fund invests in viable commercial projects and “moonshot ideas enabled by cutting-edge technologies” and seeks “deep partnerships with like-minded investors and bold entrepreneurs working on the world’s most complex problems,” its website says.
The northwest region of Saudi Arabia has been dubbed NOEM by Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of the Saudi ruling family. As the founder and chairman of the NOEM board of directors, he has outlined a vision of $500 billion invested to transform that part of his kingdom into a global innovation hub.
NIF’s website describes it as engaging in both venture capital investment, joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions.
Majid Mufti, CEO of NEOM Investment Fund, said: “The NIF strategy is designed to align NEOM’s development objectives with those of innovators and institutional investors, de-risking opportunities for them to participate in creating core global growth businesses and a thriving economy in NEOM.”
Part of NIF’s focus is finding private sector investments “to unlock solutions that would be piloted and scaled-up” in the NOEM development zone and eventually exported to the world, the website says.
Boom Supersonic declined to answer whether its investment agreement includes a possible presence in Saudi Arabia or the sale of planes. Boom Supersonic spokeswoman Aubrey Scanlan repeated the statement about making the Gulf region “dramatically more accessible” but provided no more detail about how.
The company also declined to specify whether the investment came in the form of equity financing, which would mean the NIF fund owns a stake in the business, or in another form of financing.
Boom's Overture plans advancing on several fronts
Boom Supersonic is nearing the first test flight in Mojave, California, of a single-seat test jet meant to confirm design choices and technologies for the Overture passenger jet it’s designing. Overture is meant to fly as many as 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 speeds across oceans. It would be the first supersonic passenger airliner since the Concorde retired in 2003.
The company is also building a factory its $500 million factory at Piedmont Triad International Airport where Overture will be assembled. The project is ahead of schedule, according to Boom, which plans to ramp up hiring for the plant in 2025.
Boom named Boeing veteran Scott Powell to lead its engine program earlier this year.
In Centennial, Colorado, where most of Boom’s staff of more than 250 is based, the company is putting together its Iron Bird facility, where a functional, grounded replica of an Overture will be tested and refined.
The company’s XB-1 test jet has been granted permission by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly, and the company has been steadily building up at the Mojave Air and Space Port to that initial flight.
Boom aims to have its first Overture passenger planes flying in 2026 and its first flights with passengers occurring in 2029.
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