Insolvent air taxi startup Lilium to be liquidated

This was reported by the German portal Gründerszene, citing several sources within the company. According to the report, only a small two-digit number of people will remain employed for the time being to support the imminent liquidation of the young company. A week ago, it still looked like the company would be rescued. Wirtschaftswoche reported that a takeover was imminent and ‘only’ 200 jobs were on the redundancy list.

However, KPMG’s auditors and the responsible trustee, Ivo-Meinert Willrodt, were apparently unable to finalise a deal. According to Gründerszene, the most promising potential investor could not prove within the deadline that it had the necessary liquid funds. And time is running out for Lilium, as the employees’ salaries will only be paid by the labour office until the end of the year as part of the insolvency benefits. After that, Lilium would have to pay the employees itself again.

As a consequence, the employees were informed shortly before Christmas that business operations would be discontinued, according to Gründerszene. If the liquidation of the business is confirmed, Lilium will not make it past its ninth year of life. Founded in 2015, the startup was long regarded as a promising developer of an electric flying taxi, a so-called eVTOL. The first flight was scheduled for early 2025.

However, Lilium needed an extremely large amount of capital for development. Investors poured around 1.5 billion euros into the startup, but were ultimately unwilling to add more. Lilium then sought state aid in Germany. In mid-October, however, it became clear that neither the federal government nor the Free State of Bavaria would provide any financial support, and Lilium filed for insolvency.

businessinsider.de (paywall) via manager-magazin.de, spiegel.de (all in German)