German flying taxi startup Lilium, which filed for insolvency in November, has found an investor to buy its subsidiaries.
Lilium had tasked KPMG with finding an investor to save it. The purchaser it’s found is a group named Mobile Uplift Consortium, which has agreed to buy Lilium’s assets.
Details on the investors behind the group are sparse — though Lilium says that they are from Europe and North America.
The deal covers all of the assets owned by Lilium's two German entities, not including the parent company or its subsidiaries in the UK, America, Switzerland or Spain. A spokesperson told Sifted that all the assets needed to restart the business are held in the two subsidiaries included in the deal.
The agreement comes just days after Lilium laid off its remaining staff of approximately 1,000 people. The agreement is expected to close in January, Lilium said, allowing the business to resume. The spokesperson told Sifted that 770 of the staff will return.
Lilium, which develops small aircraft that fly using electric propellers, was founded in 2015 and backed by investors including Atomico, Earlybird Venture Capital and Tencent. It then listed on the Nasdaq via a SPAC in 2021.
Earlier this year, Lilium said it was in talks with the German government for a €100m loan. Those talks fell through, leaving the country’s tech ecosystem abuzz with discussion over who the company’s white knight should be.
Lilium isn’t the only flying taxi startup that’s faced liquidity problems in recent times. In April, German electric air taxi startup Volocopter warned about the risk of going into insolvency if it couldn’t raise more capital. Weeks later the company managed to raise an undisclosed amount to keep operating.
