electric-aviation
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Sujeet Kumar
Sujeet Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Ionblox, a Fremont, California battery company building pre-lithiated silicon-anode lithium-ion cells for electric vehicles and electric aviation. A materials scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and more than 60 patents to his name, he previously served as CTO of Envia Systems, where his team developed one of the first 400 Wh/kg lithium-ion cells with a silicon anode. Ionblox, formerly Zenlabs Energy, has raised roughly $32 million in Series B funding from backers including Lilium, Applied Ventures, Temasek and Catalus Capital, and markets cells that promise higher energy density, up to five times more power, and 10-minute fast charging.
Kyle Moore
Kyle Moore is co-founder and Software Fellow at Pyka, the Alameda, California company building the world's largest commercially-approved autonomous electric aircraft. A self-taught programmer who started writing code at age 11 from rural Washington, Moore brought firmware and robotics expertise from Google X to help design Pyka's Pelican — a 1,320-lb autonomous electric aircraft now spraying crops across four continents and delivering cargo for the U.S. Air Force. Pyka has raised $95M in total funding and achieved back-to-back FAA authorizations for the largest uncrewed aircraft systems in U.S. commercial history.
Michael Norcia
Michael Norcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pyka, the world's first FAA-certified autonomous electric aviation company. Based in Alameda, California, Pyka builds large-scale autonomous electric aircraft for agricultural crop protection and cargo logistics. Norcia — a UC Davis applied physics grad who cut his teeth engineering firmware and power systems at Zee Aero, Joby Aviation, and Kittyhawk — founded Pyka in 2017 (Y Combinator S17) with a pragmatic thesis: skip the flying cars, solve the problems aviation already has. Today Pyka's Pelican aircraft spray hundreds of acres per hour across the US, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Brazil, and the company is expanding into defense with a new platform called DropShip.