Helicopter taxi company Blade is going public through a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company KSL Capital in a deal valued at $825 million.
Blade currently operates 12 terminals in the U.S. and three in India and specializes in shuttling passengers between major urban centers.
CEO Rob Wiesenthal said the company chose now to go public because technological innovations in ground mobility, such as electrification, autonomous vehicles, and longer-lasting batteries, will soon be making the leap into the "urban air mobility" space.
"It's clear to us the next battle's in the air," Wiesenthal told Cheddar Thursday.
He pointed to a research paper from Morgan Stanley titled "Are Flying Cars Preparing for Takeoff?" predicting that autonomous urban aircraft could create a $1.5 trillion market by 2040.
“Urban air mobility represents business opportunities within infrastructure, fleet management, software, hardware and content, much like the opportunity for autonomous vehicles," wrote Adam Jonas, head of Morgan Stanley's Global Auto and Shared Mobility research team, in the report.
The opportunity spurred Blade "to get the capital and move quickly," Wiesenthal said.
Indeed, the company kept the word helicopter out of its business name for this very reason.
"Our company's actually named Blade Urban Air Mobility, not Blade Helicopters, because when we started the company we knew this is where the world was going," he said.
The alternative to helicopters that Blade is banking on to revolutionize air mobility is called the electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle or eVTOL.
"It's electric. It does not emit carbons, and most importantly it's quiet," he said. "So you'll see us basically over time move our accessible fleet from helicopters to this new type of technology."
The possibility of an aircraft that doesn't cause a racket is a major selling point. One reason heliports aren't being built around the country right now is noise, Wiesenthal added.
With that in mind, he said a good portion of the proceeds from the SPAC deal will go toward strategic acquisitions to speed up the adoption of eVTOL.
The CEO compared Blade's adoption of eVTOL to when Netflix transitioned out of mailing out DVDs to streaming.
"What streaming was to Netflix, eVTOL is to Blade," he said, "and we now have the capital to make this a reality."
