--- title: "Bill Gates Invests in Hydrogen-Powered Airplane Startup" description: "Bill Gates, Amazon, and the U.K. government put millions into the hydrogen-powered plane startup ZeroAvia, which had a successful test flight in September." date: "2020-12-16" modified: "2020-12-16" authors: - name: "Dan Robitzski" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/bill-gates-invests-hydrogen-powered-airplane-startup" categories: - "Advanced Transport" tags: - "aviation" - "Bill Gates" - "hydrogen fuel" - "the digest" - "transportation" --- # Bill Gates Invests in Hydrogen-Powered Airplane Startup ![Bill Gates, Amazon, and the U.K. government put millions into the hydrogen-powered plane startup ZeroAvia, which had a successful test flight in September.]() *\Image: ZeroAvia\* ## Taking Off Hydrogen-powered plane startup ZeroAvia just added some heavy hitters to its roster of financial backers. The company closed its Series A funding round, in which investors including Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund gave a total of $21.4 million, *[Bloomberg ]()*[reports](). In addition, the U.K. government invested $16.6 million — all money that the company says will go toward finally making hydrogen fuel cells a viable replacement for fossil fuels. ## Buckle Up Aside from improving its fuel systems, the company's goal with the money is to develop a 19-seat passenger plane powered by hydrogen-electric engines, according to *Bloomberg*. While it would be a radical shift from today's aviation industry, it's not impossible — a ZeroAvia fuel cell powered a plane during a [successful test flight]() in September. ZeroAvia hopes to sell those fuel cells to other airlines in 2023 while continuing to make them more powerful. ## Clear Skies It will be many years before hydrogen planes could entirely replace fuel-burning ones. That test flight in September entailed little more than an aerial loop around an airport, and ZeroAvia doesn't expect to reach a flight range of 1,000 miles — still not nearly enough to cross the Atlantic Ocean — until 2030, *Bloomberg* reports. But as hydrogen fuel improves, it could do the world a lot of good. In 2019, the aviation industry emitted over a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, according to *Bloomberg*. That's a major source of pollution that hydrogen power could help make disappear. **READ MORE:** [Gates and Bezos Funds Back Hydrogen-Powered Plane Startup]() \[*Bloomberg*\] **More on hydrogen planes:** *[Researchers Successfully Test Hydrogen-Powered Passenger Plane]()* ## Author Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California. ### Author social links [Twitter]()