Electric Plane Maker Beta Raises $1 Billion in IPO
Company Is Focused on Initially Prioritizing Cargo and Logistics Over Passenger Travel Market
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Beta Technologies, an electric-powered aircraft manufacturer, raised $1.02 billion in an upsized initial public offering, pricing above the marketed range despite turbulence created by the US government shutdown.
The company priced the shares above range at $34 each, according to a statement Nov. 3 confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. The deal was upsized to 29.9 million shares from a base deal of 25 million sharesmarketedat $27 to $33 each. The IPO was about 20 times oversubscribed, people familiar with the matter have said.
At the IPO price, the South Burlington, Vt.-based firm has a market value of $7.6 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in itsfilingswith the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
That value would pit it squarely between two publicly traded peers,Joby Aviationat $14.4 billion andArcher Aviationat $6.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Joby and Archer went public during the special purpose acquisition company boom, when investors were particularly receptive to early-stage companies — at least, for awhile. Both firms spent most of the period since then trading below their original $10 per share SPAC IPO price, but their shares have rallied over the past year or so on high-profile partnerships. The resurgence, and Beta’s IPO, are spurring hopes that relatively quiet and inexpensive-to-operate electric aircraft will soon become a regular sight in the nation’s skies.
“There is hot demand because there will be a market, there will be a product, and certification is something that is coming,” said Francois Duflot, Bloomberg Intelligence’s aerospace analyst and a witness to a demonstration of Beta’s conventional aircraft at June’s Paris Air Show. “The question is when, and do investors underestimate the time and money that will be needed to get there?”
Beta hadraised$318 million in a funding round led by the Qatar Investment Authority last year, at a valuation the company claimed was above the $2.4 billion figure from an earlier round in 2022.
The deadlock over the U.S. government shutdown has created headwinds for companies that are seeking to go public. Under SEC guidance, companies that disclose a price range and remove the so-called delaying amendment in a filing will have their registrations declared effective automatically after 20 days, exposing them to market risk. Shares of two of the companies that took advantage of the workaround, MapLight Therapeutics and Navan Inc., are trading below their IPO prices.
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Beta has been developing electric aircraft for both passenger and defense uses since 2017. It has already racked up nearly 83,000 nautical miles of flight history for its conventional takeoff and landing aircraft, according to itsfilingswith the SEC.Its Alia conventional takeoff and landing vehicle debuted at the Paris air show earlier this year and made a flight between the Hamptons and New York City. The company is focused on initially prioritizing cargo and logistics over the larger passenger travel market.
The company is seeking regulatory certification of the conventional aircraft at the end of next year or in early 2027, and for its vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, at the end of 2027 or early 2028. Both already have backlogs of hundreds of orders.
In the first half of 2025, Beta saw a net loss of $183 million on revenue of $15.6 million, compared with net loss of $137 million on revenue of $7.6 million in the corresponding period in 2024, according to its filings.
Founder and CEO Kyle Clark is expected to have 63% of the voting power in the company after the IPO and will own all of Beta’s issued and outstanding Class B stock, the filings show.
FMR is set to have 12.8% of the Class A shares and Amazon.com Inc.’s Climate Pledge Fund would have 5.6%. Excluding the potential cornerstone investments, General Electric Co. is expected to have 9% of the Class A stock and an affiliate of Stone Point Capital co-CEO and Beta board member Chuck Davis would have 7%.
Amazon.com Inc. ranks No. 1on theTransport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companiesin North America, No. 15 on theTT Top 100 list of the largest private carriersand No. 1 on theTT Top 50 global freight list.
GE Aerospace, accounts managed by Davis’s affiliate, AllianceBernstein, BlackRock Inc., and the Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds had indicated an interest in buying as much as $300 million worth of shares in the offering at the IPO price.
The offering is being led by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Beta is expected to begin trading Nov. 4 in the New York Stock Exchange under the ticket BETA.
Joby, whose stock has climbed 110% in the year to date, announced a collaboration in October with no less than AI chip high-flyer Nvidia Corp. as the only aviation launch partner for its new platform. Archer Aviation shares have more than tripled in the past 12 months, getting a sizable boost in December 2024 after sealing a partnership with weapons maker Anduril Industries to build a hybrid military aircraft.
Beta’s limited revenue and net loss may give some investors pause, even in an environment where a company like Fermi Inc., an AI infrastructure developer with a similarly limited operatinghistory, can snare a $15 billion-plus valuation in its debut.
Matt Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist at research and ETF firm Renaissance Capital, says the market for first-time share sales is about betting on new technology before it’s widely adopted.
“It’s definitely the type of company that would have normally gone public via a SPAC like Joby and Archer did, but we are starting to see some of these early-stage companies go public at multibillion-dollar market valuations helped by strong peers and demand for their shares,” Kennedy said.
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