Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Skyfly Lands $10M to Sell You an Electric Aircraft

Most air taxi headlines are about carrying strangers across cities. Skyfly is chasing a different customer: you, owning the aircraft yourself. The British company announced on October 20, 2026, that it has closed a $10 million seed round to take its two-seat Axe electric aircraft from flying prototype to certified production machine, with first customer deliveries planned for 2027.

The round was led by HICO Investment Group, a specialist growth equity investor, with participation from Archangel. Sixty-one private customers around the world are already on the order book. For a two-seat aircraft that most people have never heard of, that is a real queue.

Built for a rulebook that just changed

The timing is the story. In July 2026, the FAA’s MOSAIC reforms rewrote the Light Sport Aircraft rules in the United States, opening the category to electric propulsion, multi-motor designs and vertical takeoff aircraft. The category was built for private owners rather than airlines, and it comes with simplified pilot qualification requirements. Skyfly says the Axe was designed for that rulebook before it existed.

That head start shows in the record. The prototype has flown more than 100 piloted flights. It completed Europe’s first airfield-to-airfield eVTOL flight. It holds experimental flight permits in both the UK and the US, where a dedicated test team has been flying since 2025, and it has drawn crowds at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in both 2025 and 2026. The new money funds the FAA light-sport certification under MOSAIC, scales production in the UK and the US, and grows the team.

CEO Michael Thompson put it plainly: the investment gives Skyfly the resources to take the Axe from a flying prototype to a certified aircraft in customers’ hands, and the MOSAIC rules have opened a route to market that simply did not exist for electric aircraft before.

Wings, not just rotors

Look at the Axe and the design choice jumps out. It hovers on eight fixed-angle electric motors, then lets its wings do the work in forward flight. Most small personal eVTOL designs rely on rotors alone and can burn up to four times more energy in cruise, because nothing is generating aerodynamic lift. The Axe can also take off, cruise and land like a conventional aeroplane whenever a runway is available.

There are no tilting motors and no rotating wings, which removes the heavy, complex mechanisms found on many rivals. If power is ever lost, the aircraft glides. The projected numbers: a range of more than 100 miles, 60 to 90 minutes of flight time, a cruising speed of 100 mph and a 200 kg payload, with running costs projected at around 70 pounds – roughly $90 – per flying hour. Compare that with the roughly 300 pounds, about $400, per hour Skyfly cites for the aging two-seat trainers it wants to replace.

That comparison is the pitch in one line. The two most common two-seat trainers, the Robinson R22 and the Cessna 152, were designed in the 1970s. They are still flying with minimal updates. Skyfly is betting that private pilots are ready for something quieter, simpler and cheaper to run – an aircraft you can lift out of a field, cruise on a wing, and park without a runway at either end.

Where Axe sits next to the air taxis

The big city air taxis are solving a different problem. When Archer flew Midnight across seven Bay Area cities this week, the point was airline-style operations in crowded airspace. The Axe is personal transport: your aircraft, your schedule, your field. Both paths need the same thing, though – regulators who can certify electric flight without a decade of paperwork. MOSAIC is the FAA’s answer for the small end of the market, and states are building the data systems to match, as Ohio’s new advanced air mobility plan shows.

A second aircraft, and what investors are really buying

Alongside the Axe, Skyfly is developing the Longbow, a hybrid-electric unmanned aircraft with a range of more than 400 miles and the same 200 kg payload, aimed at cargo and government work. The seed money accelerates the hybrid propulsion system behind it. Both aircraft will be built at Skyfly’s 10,000 square foot manufacturing and assembly facility in the UK. Because the Axe’s airframe is technology-agnostic, new batteries and motors can be fitted as they improve – a quiet but important detail, since battery energy density is the one number that keeps moving in this industry’s favor.

For investors, the appeal is a certification path that already exists, an order book of 61 customers, and a product priced for individuals rather than fleet operators. For buyers, the practical takeaway is simpler. If the 2027 delivery target holds, the first privately owned electric vertical takeoff aircraft will not come from a Silicon Valley giant. It will come from a small British team that designed for the new rules early, flew 100 times before raising serious money, and kept the machine simple enough to glide home.

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