Britain’s Skyfly raises €8.91 million to bring its two-seat Axe eVTOL to market and develop Longbow for defence

Skyfly Technologies, a British developer of electric and hybrid-electric vertical take-off aircraft, has closed an €8.91 million ($10 million) Seed round.

The round was led by HICO Investment Group, a specialist growth equity investor, with participation from Archangel, a €50 million early-stage fund and Europe’s only dedicated next-generation defence technology venture fund.

“What Skyfly’s team has achieved with so little is remarkable: a new aircraft, designed and built from scratch, flying and now leading the way through a brand-new certification pathway. We’re excited to back a team with a big vision and relentless drive to execute,” said Chris Hartnoll, Managing Director, HICO Investment Group.

Founded in 2019 and based in Thorpe Mandeville, Oxfordshire, Skyfly develops manned and unmanned aircraft and systems for civilian and defence markets. Its flagship product, the Axe, is a two-seat, fully electric, vertically-capable aircraft with a range of more than 100 miles and a cruise speed of 100mph, requiring no runway for take-off or landing. The Longbow is its hybrid-electric unmanned derivative for defence and government customers. 

The Axe is developed under the leadership of CTO Dr. William Brooks, who has spent over three decades in light aircraft development and has certified more than 2,000 aircraft currently in service. Axe takes off like a helicopter using eight fixed-angle electric motors, transitions to forward flight where its wings generate aerodynamic lift and can operate from conventional runways.

Since there are no tilting motors or rotary wings, Axe is designed to eliminate the mechanical complexity and potential points of failure that characterise many eVTOL concepts. In an emergency power loss scenario, the winged design allows the aircraft to glide rather than fall. 

The Axe offers a range of over 100 miles, a flight time of 60 to 90 minutes, a cruising speed of 100mph and a 200kg payload capacity. Skyfly projects an operating cost of around €83.57 (£70) per flight, which gives it a favourable standing against the likes of legacy two-seater aircrafts such as Robinson R22 or Cessna 152.

Longbow, Skyfly’s second aircraft, is a hybrid-electric unmanned aircraft with a range exceeding 400 miles and the same 200kg payload. It is designed for cargo resupply, intelligence and surveillance, medevac, and ship-to-shore logistics missions. The company says both the aircraft will be manufactured at Skyfly’s 10,000 sq.ft. facility in Thorpe Mandeville, Oxfordshire.

“Longbow addresses a clear requirement for unmanned systems that can move meaningful payloads over significant distances without relying on a runway. Archangel invests exclusively in defence-first companies, and our backing of Skyfly reflects the potential we see in its technology to deliver mission necessary capability for the modern battlespace,” said Nicholas Nelson, General Partner at Archangel Ventures.

Skyfly says its Axe prototype has completed more than 100 piloted flights, including Europe’s first airfield-to-airfield eVTOL flight. It holds experimental flight permits in both the UK and the US, and sixty-one private customers globally have already placed orders. 

The fundraise comes amid a regulatory shift, with the FAA’s MOSAIC reforms taking effect in July 2026. The MOSAIC reforms rewrote the rules governing Light Sport Aircraft to admit electric propulsion, multi-motor architectures and vertical take-off aircraft into a category that has been historically restricted to private owners rather than commercial operators. Skyfly says its Axe, a two-seat electric Vertically Capable Aircraft (eVCA) classified as Light Sport-class, was designed precisely for this rulebook.

Michael Thompson, founder and CEO of Skyfly, said, “This investment gives us the resources to take the Axe from a flying prototype to a certified aircraft in customers’ hands. The FAA’s MOSAIC rules have opened a route to market that simply did not exist for electric aircraft before, and the Axe was designed for exactly this category. HICO and Archangel understood that timing, and their backing lets us move at the pace the opportunity demands: completing certification and standing up series production.”

The fresh capital will be deployed across three areas: completing FAA Light Sport Aircraft certification for the Axe under the MOSAIC rules, scaling manufacturing capacity on both sides of the Atlantic, and accelerating development of the Longbow.

The post Britain’s Skyfly raises €8.91 million to bring its two-seat Axe eVTOL to market and develop Longbow for defence appeared first on EU-Startups.