LIFT Aircraft

Flying cars used to be a dream — an idea only possible in cartoons like “The Jetsons.”

Thanks to a startup called LIFT Aircraft, they may soon become a reality.

LIFT is a transportation company whose goal is to enable anyone to fly a personal aircraft. It’s created a flying electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) craft, a single-seat aerial vehicle called HEXA. This aircraft has been developed over nearly a decade and has even enabled hundreds of people to successfully take flight.

As science and tech media outlet New Atlas said, “It’s real, and you can fly it.”

LIFT’s aircraft was designed to change the way people travel, especially those who suffer from frustrating commutes to work or school.

The average American spends 54 hours stuck in traffic a year. Of these trips, eighty-five percent are fewer than fifteen miles, and ninety percent involve a single occupant.

Helicopters are an alternative. But they’re loud, expensive, and impractical for most people. As a result, personal air travel has largely been off-limits to everyone except the uber wealthy.

Not anymore. LIFT’s HEXA is a single-seat, hover-optimized, semi-autonomous personal aerial vehicle. It makes flying simple and inexpensive, enabling anyone to experience the joy, freedom, and utility of personal, vertical flight.

HEXA can reach speeds of sixty-two miles per hour, and can fly up to fifteen miles in fifteen minutes. The aircraft is modular in design, enabling the cabin and landing gear to be swapped with any payload. This makes it ideal for applications including personal travel, emergency response, and heavy-lift cargo deployment.

Many people worry about safety when it comes to flying cars. HEXA was created with safety as a top priority.

It features eighteen independent rotors, and can fly even if it loses six of them. It also has a triple-redundant computer system, seven floats, and a whole-aircraft ballistic parachute.

LIFT is targeting the market for urban air mobility (UAM), which Morgan Stanley projects will be worth one trillion dollars by 2040 and nine trillion dollars by 2050.

The company’s strategy of developing an ultralight category vehicle means it’s avoided the time-consuming and costly aircraft and production certification processes, yet can still offer flights on a pay-per-flight basis for recreational, personal, and public-agency uses.

As mentioned, HEXA is the result of years of development and more than twenty-five million dollars in funding, including from venture-capital firms.

The company has a fleet of more than two dozen aircraft, and successful flights have already been achieved.

In 2024, LIFT launched the HEXA Generation 2, which offered longer flight times, gains in efficiency and thrust, and reduced noise. LIFT showcased HEXA at the 2025 Osaka World Expo, performed a flight exhibition as part of an International Civil Aviation Organization symposium in Abu Dhabi, and in 2024, the first-ever live TV broadcast eVTOL flight aired on “Good Morning America,” featuring LIFT’s aircraft.

LIFT offers introductory flights at $199 for a three-to-five-minute journey. It plans to offer full-performance flights to pilots for as low as forty-nine dollars per flight.

Team Background

Jace McCown - Director of Flight Operations

Jace is a U.S. Air Force veteran and licensed commercial pilot. He’s also a certified flight instructor and a licensed unmanned aircraft system remote pilot.

He spent a decade in the military, serving as a helicopter instructor pilot. After that, he was a flight test engineer and Chief Pilot with Skyways Air Transportation, an aviation and aerospace company.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a graduate certificate in Agroforestry from the University of Missouri.

Matt Chasen - Founder & CEO

Matt is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in the aerospace and transportation industries.

While obtaining his MBA at the University of Texas, he founded uShip, a transportation marketplace serving the freight and shipping sectors. He guided this company to $200 million in annual sales, and received an award from the Austin Business Journal for “Best CEO.” He also was named to Austin, Texas’ “Under 40” list, was named a Texas “Rising Star,” and was an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” finalist in 2012.

Prior to business school, Matt was an engineer at Boeing, an aviation company, where he worked on the F-22 fighter, airborne laser, and other advanced aerospace projects. Before Boeing, he studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, and was a NASA scholarship recipient.

In addition to his role with LIFT, Matt is a co-founder of Hitch, a transportation startup focused on micro-mobility travel, and is a partner with ATX Seed Ventures, a venture capital fund investing in early-stage startups.

Kenny Miller - Chief Financial Officer

Kenny began his career as an analyst with Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. From there, he was an associate with JatoTech Ventures, a VC fund that achieved multiple successful exits.

He then worked for Applied Materials, one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips for electronics and computers. After that, he returned to finance, working as a research analyst with Bonanza Capital, an investment management company.

More recently, Kenny was an associate with Aldus Equity, where he led advisement for U.S. public pension funds. From there, he was Managing Director with Nokomis Capital, a hedge fund. He joined LIFT Aircraft in February 2021.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Texas and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Balazs Kerulo - Chief Engineer

Balazs is a professional fixed-wing pilot, and was one of the first to ride a “multicopter” in 2015.

He began his career in aviation engineering, working as a department leader with Corvus Aircraft, an aircraft manufacturer. He then was an aircraft engineer with Daws Engineering, an aerospace company.

From there, he was an R&D Director with Slot Consulting, one of the leading European consulting businesses for aviation research projects. After that, he was a manager with Aviocheck, a web services startup, then was Head of Portfolio Management with Bay Zoltan, a Hungary-based research institute.

More recently, Balazs was CEO of ByeGravity, a startup developing drone technology. He holds a Master’s degree in Communications from the University of Szeged in Hungary and studied Aircraft Engineering at the College of Nyiregyhaza.

Co-Investors