Kitty Hawk, the air taxi company founded by Larry Page, is shutting down. Recognition of a non-impacting failure of Wisk Aero.
After over a decade of trying to bring flying cars to life, Kitty Hawk closes. “We are still working out the details of what happens next,” the Larry Page-funded startup wrote on LinkedIn. Prior to this announcement, Kitty Hawk’s last public communication was in the spring of 2021.
Kitty Hawk, the air taxi company founded by Larry Page, is shutting down
We learned at the time that the company had parted ways with engineer Damon Vander Lind after “months”of falling out with Larry Page and CEO Sebastian Thrun. About a year earlier, the company canceled its original Flyer project and fired most of its 70-person team that worked on the device.
It’s hard to know what really caused Kitty Hawk to go out of business, but Sebastian Thrun’s comments after the Flyer project stopped developing could provide an important clue: “No matter how much energy we expended, we couldn’t find a viable business,”the manager said. Following the departure of Damon Vander Lind the following year, it emerged that Kitty Hawk was ready to double down on her Heavyside VTOL aircraft. The company acquired 3D Robotics and brought in company co-founder Chris Anderson as chief operating officer.
Recognition of a non-impacting failure of Wisk Aero.
Despite the end of the adventures of Kitty Hawk, this is probably not the last we hear about Larry Page’s flying car ambitions. Indeed, according to CNBC, this shutdown will not affect Wisk Aero, a company that was born in 2019 from a partnership between Kitty Hawk and Boeing.
“Kitty Hawk’s decision to cease operations does not change Boeing’s commitment to Wisk. We are proud to be a founding member of Wisk Aero and look forward to the work they have done to drive innovation and sustainability into the future of electric air travel,” Boeing told the newspaper. “We do not expect Kitty Hawk’s announcement to impact Wisk or other businesses in any way.”