Kitty Hawk

A relatively new startup by the name of Kitty Hawk is showing off its all-electric flying ‘car’ for the first time today, almost a year since we first learned that Alphabet CEO Larry Page is one the startup’s biggest backers. While often referred to as a flying car, it’s obvious now that what Kitty Hawk has been working on for the last couple of years is more accurately described as a human-carrying drone…

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Earlier this year, we wrote a profile on an interesting startup, Zee Aero, developing a battery-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft near Google’s X lab. The company caught our attention when it started hiring talent from NASA, Tesla and Stanford.

At the time, we couldn’t confirm where the money was coming from, but today we learn that Alphabet’s billionaire CEO Larry Page is secretively behind the electric aircraft startup, reportedly financing it with over $100 million, and even setting up a competing startup, Kitty Hawk, to test another model.

The group’s proximity with Google led a lot of people to believe it was financed by the tech giant, but in fact, Page is financing the initiative himself and not through Alphabet or Google Ventures. 
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