Help us pay for in-depth stories like this one by becoming a Seven Days Super Reader.
One day in June, Beta Technologies founder Kyle Clark hopped into the cockpit of his company’s electric airplane prototype, Alia, and flew four passengers from an airport on the tip of Long Island to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens. The 45-minute flight over the New York City area offered a tantalizing glimpse of the Manhattan skyline — and made the once-farfetched notion of emissions-free air travel seem closer than ever.
On Tuesday morning, the company landed in Manhattan itself, debuting on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol “BETA” in a landmark moment for the electric aviation startup and Vermont’s regional economy. Clark, his wife, Katie, company board chair Chuck Davis and others stood on a balcony inside the stock exchange and rang its iconic opening bell as cheers of “Beta! Beta!” rang out from the trading floor below.
“It’s been quite a ride,” Clark said in an interview this week with Seven Days.
Beta raised more than $1 billion through its initial public offering — the first by a Vermont company in nearly three decades. As investors lined up to buy, Beta priced its stock higher than it had planned, at $34 per share, and offered more shares for purchase.
“They are flying into another league.”
Frank Cioffi
Beta’s entrée to Wall Street represents one of the largest single infusions of investor cash that Vermont has ever seen. It marks an astonishing rise for a trailblazing aviation firm that Clark, a Chittenden County native, launched in 2017 after a chance meeting with part-time Vermonter Martine Rothblatt, the billionaire founder of SiriusXM and CEO of United Therapeutics. Incubated in a dilapidated hangar at Burlington International Airport, Beta is now worth more than $7 billion, the trading price of its stock suggests.
“They are flying into another league,” said Frank Cioffi, president of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, an economic development nonprofit.
Clark’s team aims to usher in a revolution in flight by building a new electric aircraft — and all of the associated components — from the ground up. The company hopes its planes will soon carry packages for UPS to rural counties, human organs to hospitals, mail between the islands of New Zealand and passengers across cities. Its primary Alia prototype can travel about 250 miles like a conventional plane with up to 5 passengers or 200 cubic feet of cargo, but Beta is also developing a more complex version that will take off and land like a helicopter. Its planes can recharge between flights in about an hour.
Clark’s vision, which blends an audacious belief in the transformative potential of electric aviation with the pragmatic sensibilities of a hockey player turned engineer, has now attracted more than $2.5 billion in direct investment, earning him a nod last week as one of Time magazine’s top 100 climate leaders worldwide. Just before its IPO, Beta secured a $300 million investment from GE Aerospace, one of the largest and most respected firms in the aerospace industry. “We really like the team. We like the underlying technology,” GE Aerospace CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr. told investors on a recent earnings call.
By going public, Beta follows in the footsteps of some of the state’s most storied brands.
Beta has already completed a 188,000-square-foot manufacturing plant on airport property in South Burlington that the company says can produce 300 planes each year. It employs more than 800 people, mostly in Vermont, and adds more each month, Clark said. More than 300 of them traveled to Manhattan to celebrate the IPO.
The stock exchange offers a new and ongoing source of capital for the startup, which is crucial as it endeavors to bring new aircraft to market. It also allows average Vermonters to invest in a local, albeit high-risk, firm. By going public, Beta follows in the footsteps of some of the state’s most storied brands, including Ben & Jerry’s, Seventh Generation and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. But the amount of cash Beta raised this week far exceeds what those firms brought in during their initial offerings.
“It dwarfs all of them combined,” said Ken Merritt, a Burlington-based business lawyer who assisted Green Mountain Coffee Roasters with its 1993 offering.
Merritt was succinct in his assessment of Beta’s debut: “Pretty amazing.”
The company was able to strike while the iron was hot, taking advantage of an IPO market that has rebounded this year after a long drought, Merritt said. Clark had resisted doing so during the last surge, a time when many of Beta’s competitors used regulatory shortcuts to go public and take advantage of industry hype. In a 2021 interview with Seven Days, the chief executive emphasized the advantages of remaining private, including fewer public disclosures that can compromise competitive edge and fewer shareholders to please.
Kyle Clark, with raised fist, celebrating on Tuesday Credit: Courtesy of Brian Jenkins
Tuesday’s offering dispelled concerns that Beta might have missed its moment by opting for a slower path to market via a traditional IPO. Clark credited the successful offering in part to that patient approach, which he said has earned Beta credibility with committed investors.
“It’s not a short-term sugar high,” the CEO said. “It’s a long-term business that is going to generate the right muscle and the right experiences to do something that will forever change aviation.”
The company’s stock rose over the course of Tuesday, bucking a down day for the markets. Beta shares closed at $36, a nearly 6 percent jump.
Beta is already one of the largest private employers in Vermont, and the billion-dollar infusion signals that it will remain a major player in the near term. The company has attracted talent from Tesla and other Silicon Valley ventures, which could help nurture the local tech ecosystem for years to come. Beta’s highly paid employees are already the single most significant buyer pool in the region’s tight housing market, Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman president Leslee MacKenzie noted.
Beta has made some important strides toward bringing its portfolio of technology — including Alia, its electric motors and aviation-grade battery charging equipment — to market. It completed a test flight last year in which Alia took off like a helicopter and then used a separate propeller to fly like an airplane. In its conventional takeoff configuration, Alia hopscotched across the U.S. earlier this year before being shipped by boat to New Zealand, where it recently began test flights for prospective customer Air New Zealand. More than 50 airports around the country are now equipped with Beta battery chargers for the planes.
Beta is “the best thing to happen to Vermont since the chairlift,” said Davis, the board chair, investor and longtime business executive.
The company’s ascent has enchanted local officials, including Gov. Phil Scott, who has predicted that the company will become as important to the Vermont economy as IBM was in the 20th century. “Mark my words,” he said when Beta opened its manufacturing plant in 2023.
The progress of Alia — with its bird-like airframe that was inspired by the Arctic tern — has been as unlikely as it has been alluring. But the company still faces profound challenges. Beta is banking on a belief that its technological revolution will greatly expand existing markets for small aircraft and create entirely new ones. Yet it expects to sell Alia for at least $4.5 million — more than a comparable helicopter — and its planes will require regular and expensive battery replacements.
Beta’s development timelines, like those of its competitors, have repeatedly been pushed back. The Alia prototype that Beta flew across Long Island is still at least a year away from regulatory approval, and its electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing cousin, known in the aviation industry as an eVTOL, is at least two years out. Beta may well need even more money than it raised this week to get to that finish line — which is really just another starting line.
The so-called advanced air mobility industry, headlined by eVTOLs, has “always been a story about promising something for the future, a future that always seems to be a couple years away,” said aviation consultant Richard Aboulafia, who considers himself a skeptic.
Beta declined to speak to Seven Days in advance of this week’s IPO, citing regulatory rules. Its trip to Wall Street, however, provided an unprecedented window into the company’s finances, investors and strategic thinking. Using new regulatory filings, industry reports and interviews with aerospace analysts, Seven Days explored what the IPO reveals about Vermont’s most consequential startup — and its prospects for leading the world into a future of electric flight.
What did we learn from the IPO?
Beta Technologies’ production facility Credit: Courtesy of Brian Jenkins
Hundreds of pages of disclosures filed in conjunction with Beta’s public offering offer a peek inside the dynamic startup.
We knew Beta was spending gobs of cash. Now we know how much.
Industry analysts once estimated it would take $1 billion to bring vertical-takeoff planes to market.
If only!
Beta and its competitors have cruised past that capital benchmark, at least in part because it’s taken longer than expected to get the Federal Aviation Administration to certify their novel aircraft for general use.
Beta initially projected that its vertical-takeoff Alia would win regulators’ approval by 2024. Instead, it’s been burning cash to get to a new deadline: late 2026 or early 2027. The company spent $200 million in 2023, then $283 million in 2024 and another $170 million during just the first six months of 2025 — $653 million in just two and a half years.
Now Beta hopes its debut on the stock market will provide enough cash to get it to the finish line.
Big-name board members have skin in the game.
Many of the Vermont business leaders who are excited about Beta like to name-check its star-studded backers. “There are some incredible innovators on the board,” said Cioffi, the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation president.
He was referring to Davis, the Vermont-raised businessman, former Goldman Sachs executive and founder of the $70 billion investment firm Stone Point Capital; John Abele, cofounder of Boston Scientific and Vermont’s only billionaire; and Martine Rothblatt, the unabashedly futuristic polymath with a home in Lincoln who is trying to make transplantable animal organs at her Maryland-based biomedical company, United Therapeutics.
Davis, the board chair, and Abele are also two of Beta’s biggest shareholders, corporate disclosures reveal. Each has made investments that exceed $100 million. The pair made up two of the company’s top five shareholders pre-IPO, alongside GE Aerospace, Fidelity Investments and TPG Rise Climate, an investment fund. Davis added to his investment as part of this week’s offering.
“What Kyle and Katie and Beta are doing is absolutely revolutionary,” he said on Tuesday.
Clark frequently credits Rothblatt for getting Beta off the ground and has long touted United Therapeutics as its first customer. United Therapeutics has continued to work with Beta in recent years: Beta has earned $15.7 million since 2022 through a pair of development agreements with the company and has a tentative deal to sell it four conventional-takeoff planes, plus an unspecified number of vertical-takeoff aircraft. Last year, United Therapeutics purchased $30 million in equity.
Beta predicts a huge market for small electric planes.
Beta, in its pitch to investors, projects that global demand for electric and hybrid aircraft will soar to 60,000 planes by 2035, for a total market worth $250 billion.
That projection — while in line with optimistic forecasts by big-name consultants such as McKinsey — would mark a Jetsons-level transformation. It imagines a near future in which annual sales of air taxis and small cargo planes exceed the roughly 4,000 fighter jets, jetliners, business planes and helicopters that are currently sold globally each year, according to Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace management consultancy.
Beta is also a battery company.
The market for aircraft batteries will be even more lucrative than the planes themselves, the company predicts. Because batteries deteriorate with repeated use, Beta expects its aircraft will need a replacement nearly every year. That’s a roughly $650,000 annual cost, on which Beta says it can reap a high profit margin. The company currently assembles the 560-pound battery packs at its South Burlington plant.
But the high cost of replacement batteries for what Clark told prospective investors last month may be a $4.5 million aircraft could hurt the market, especially if the planes have more limited uses than conventional ones.
“The question of what payload and range eVTOLs can guarantee, without spending half their lives connected to chargers or toasting half-million-dollar batteries, is real,” aviation consultant Bill Sweetman wrote in an op-ed last month in Aviation Week.
Beta is trying to hedge its bets.
As part of its sanctioned IPO “road show,” Beta put together a slick video presentation to help introduce the company to prospective investors. While the plane’s potential as an air taxi generated much of the buzz in the early days, Clark tells viewers everything about Beta that doesn’t involve them. “There are so many other applications,” Clark says in the video. He mentions cargo deliveries, military uses, and emergency medical transport, as well as the underlying electric propulsion technology that Beta is developing. “We’re building the future of aviation,” he concludes.
Unlike some other electric aviation startups, Beta doesn’t want to run an Uber-like air taxi service. Instead, Beta is trying to situate itself as a technology company that can pioneer electric aviation in whatever commercial form the industry eventually takes.
In another telling move, the company revealed in corporate filings last month that it plans to build a larger, conventional electric plane that can carry up to 19 passengers. The tech that Beta is honing for its Alia airframe will allow it to “move rapidly” to develop larger electric aircraft, the company claims.
Beta’s fortunes may depend on its founder.
Clark remains one of the company’s biggest assets. He retained a majority stake in the company after the public offering, which is good news to those who want to see Beta continue growing in Vermont, given his ties to the state. The company, in investor disclosures, professed that its future depends “substantially” on Clark’s ongoing contributions.
Beta maintains a life insurance policy on Clark, who, the company noted, also participates in “high-risk activities, such as recreational aviation, which carries the risk of serious injury and death.” One of Beta’s test pilots, Lochie Ferrier, died in January 2024 in a recreational aviation accident in California.
Clark earned just over $1 million in salary and bonuses last year. His wife, Katie, earned $174,000 as Beta’s director of culture.
What headwinds does Beta still face?
A Beta employee at work Credit: Courtesy of Brian Jenkins
The most urgent task for Beta hasn’t changed: Get Alia certified by the Federal Aviation Administration so it can take to the skies. The company’s turn to the stock market is all about ensuring Beta has the cash to finish developing its aircraft and pass through a gauntlet of regulatory approvals. Until then, Beta doesn’t have a product.
The feds have never before certified an electric aircraft that takes off and lands vertically. As part of its IPO, Beta detailed a distinctive strategy that it says will help achieve that milestone before anyone else in the industry. Clark described an incremental approach in which Beta puts forward elements of its new technologies one by one, proving each on its own terms and allowing regulators to digest it in smaller bites.
The FAA has already certified the propeller that pushes Alia forward in the air. Now Beta is working to certify its electric motor. After that, it will put forward the version of Alia that flies like a conventional airplane. Finally, the company says, it will certify the vertical-takeoff model.
In its recent pitch to public investors, Beta revealed that a recent executive director of the FAA’s Aircraft Certification Office is working with the company. Lirio Liu appeared in a company video last month explaining that she had chosen Beta over other electric aviation startups. In the video, Liu said she was impressed when Clark told her he was “building an industry,” not just an aircraft.
An A250 charging Credit: Courtesy of Brian Jenkins
Even if Beta’s path to certification succeeds, the company’s future is far from a sure bet. Years of technology development, billions in collective investment and dozens of press releases about new milestones have failed to persuade some industry analysts that the market for vertical-takeoff planes will live up to the hype.
“Electric airplanes are going to be a big part of the future,” said Mike Barnard, a climate tech strategist and consultant. But that future, he said, won’t include air taxis: “The entire space is a mirage that is going to lose investors money. Beta is no different.”
The aerospace consultant Aboulafia agrees. However ingenious they appear, air taxis amount merely to “mediocre and expensive helicopters.” They do reduce fuel and maintenance expenses, but Beta’s $4.5 million price tag is higher than some small helicopters, and it still requires a pilot, at least in the near term. The high price of batteries — and the frequency with which Beta says they will need to be replaced — cuts into fuel savings. Beta maintains that once the high maintenance costs of a traditional turbine are considered, Alia still will be roughly 40 percent cheaper to own than a comparable plane and 70 percent cheaper than a comparable helicopter.
Aboulafia is less pessimistic about the conventional version of Alia, which Beta says will initially serve short- and medium-range cargo, medical and logistics missions. Interest from UPS, Amazon, United Therapeutics and Air New Zealand indicates that there is at least some market for this iteration of Alia. Beta also faces far less competition for its conventional-takeoff plane.
What remains unclear, Aboulafia emphasized, is how much that market can grow. For cargo planes, Aboulafia said, “there’s no grand, utopian future. There’s a mature market that can be stimulated a bit.”
Beta unveiled its plan to sell the conventional version of Alia in 2023, shortly after pushing back its certification projections for the vertical-takeoff model. Barnard views the conventional-takeoff version as a design afterthought — it shares mostly the same frame as the vertical-takeoff version — and is likely to offer lackluster performance as a result.
“They have a suboptimal airframe. They have a suboptimal propeller location,” he said.
A “mini cube” charger Credit: Courtesy of Brian Jenkins
The U.S. Air Force was one of Beta’s early partners; the company flew nearly 300 military test flights through a program, Agility Prime, that was created to stoke development of new technologies that could also have military applications.
But after several years of testing with Beta, Joby Aviation and others, the federal government seems to have concluded that small electric aircraft aren’t yet useful for military operations. A military-commissioned report by RAND, made public late last year, found that the aircraft are “unlikely to be transformational today.” It noted that military leaders said air taxis would be more attractive if they could fly without a pilot and had increased range, payload and hover capabilities. The RAND report indicated that small aircraft with hybrid-electric engines may be better suited to military purposes.
Since then, Beta and Joby have both partnered with major defense contractors to develop hybrid technology. Joby is working with L3Harris Technologies, while Beta won a $300 million investment from GE Aerospace. Both are also working on autonomous technology that could allow for pilotless flights.
Beta says its customers have already placed aircraft orders — both firm and tentative — that are together worth $3.5 billion. But to some skeptics, Beta’s widening product portfolio indicates that it is still searching for a viable market for its technologies.
How did Beta get here?
2017
Clark founds Beta Technologies after meeting United Therapeutics CEO Martine Rothblatt.
2018
The company moves into a vacant hangar at Burlington International Airport.
January 2019
Beta unveils its first prototype, Ava, which Wired magazine dubs the “Edward Scissorhands” of flying cars.
January 2021
Clark flies the Alia prototype beyond airport property for the first time.
March 2021
Beta raises $368 million in Series A funding from Fidelity Investments, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and others.
May 2021
The U.S. Air Force approves Alia for test flights as part of Agility Prime, a defense tech accelerator program.
April 2022
Beta closes a $375 million Series B funding round, led by TPG Rise Climate, a private equity fund focused on climate change.
March 2023
Beta pushes back the projected launch date for Alia, its vertical takeoff plane, and announces plans to certify and sell a conventional takeoff version of the plane.
October 2023
Beta opens a 188,000-square-foot full-scale manufacturing plant at Burlington International Airport, financed by a $169 million loan from the U.S.Export-Import Bank.
April 2024
During a test flight in Plattsburgh, N.Y., Alia successfully transitions from vertical hover to horizontal cruise with a pilot onboard.
October 2024
A Series C funding round nets $318 million, led by the Qatari Investment Authority, a government-controlled investment fund.
September 2025
Beta inks a $300 million deal with GE Aerospace to jointly develop a hybrid turbogenerator that can extend range and payload.
November 4, 2025
Beta debuts on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol BETA, netting more than $1 billion.
Credit: Courtesy
The short list includes some of the state’s most iconic brands. But the path doesn’t always lead to success, as this list, researched by Merritt, the business lawyer, shows:
Ben & Jerry’s, 1984. Raised about $750,000 in an unusual stock offering that was open only to Vermont residents to help fund construction of its Waterbury plant. The company went private following a sale in 2000 to multinational conglomerate Unilever.
S-K-I Ltd., 1985. The onetime owner of the Mount Snow and Killington ski resorts raised several million dollars to fund a nationwide acquisition strategy. The ski resorts have changed hands multiple times since.
Vermont Teddy Bear, 1993. Raised more than $10 million, but its stock price quickly crashed. The company went private again in 2005.
Seventh Generation, 1993. Colchester-based maker of eco-friendly cleaners raised $7 million. The company faltered in subsequent years and went private again in 1999. It was purchased by Unilever in 2016.
Mace Security International, 1993. Bennington-based maker of pepper spray raised several million dollars, but its stock declined over time. The company left Vermont in 2013 and went private in 2024.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters,1993. Raised roughly $10 million in initial public offering. Later moved to NASDAQ, acquired Keurig and, in 2016, became private in a $14 billion deal.
IDX Systems, 1995. South Burlington-based health care software company raised $72 million. It was acquired by GE Healthcare in 2006 for $1.2 billion.
Rock of Ages, 1997. An $18.50-per-share offering raised nearly $60 million in an effort to become a vertically integrated quarry-to-tombstone company. Went private in 2010 following purchase by Swensen Granite.
Casella Waste Systems, 1997. Raised more than $50 million, with stock that opened around $20 per share. Today, the $5.5-billion waste management firm remains headquartered in Rutland and trades at $90 per share.
A few other Vermont companies have also traded their stocks publicly, including:
iSun, a family-owned electrical contractor that went public in 2019 as it sought to expand into solar installation. The firm later acquired SunCommon before going bankrupt in 2024.
Merchants Bancshares, a state-chartered bank that grew during the second half of the 20th century under the leadership of Dudley Davis. His son Chuck Davis, now chair of Beta’s board, was a director at Merchants for more than 20 years. The bank was acquired by Community Bank in 2016 for $304 million.
Joby aircraft Credit: Courtesy of Joby Aviation | © Joby Aero, Inc.
Joby Aviation is the largest player in the industry, with roughly 2,000 employees, and has the deepest pockets as it seeks to become the world’s first air taxi business. The California company went public in 2021 and is currently valued at roughly $13 billion following a surge in its stock price. It recently bought the helicopter air-commuting company Blade — which had previously inked a deal to purchase Beta aircraft. Joby, like Beta, is also working on hybrid technology.
Archer Aviation continues to develop a four-person, piloted electric air taxi dubbed Midnight. The publicly traded California startup recently boasted of plans to carry passengers around Abu Dhabi by the end of 2025 but has quietly pushed back that timeline while awaiting flight certifications there, Bloomberg reported. Archer has raised nearly $3 billion, according to a report from SMG Consulting, which tracks the industry.
Heart Aerospace is developing a 30-seat regional hybrid-electric passenger jet in partnership with United Airlines, Air Canada and others, which it aims to certify by 2029. The company recently announced plans to relocate all operations from Sweden to the U.S. Beta board member and paid adviser John Slattery was chair of the Heart Aerospace board until May of this year.
Electra, of Virginia, also aims to introduce new conventional-takeoff aircraft. Its EL9 prototype will carry nine passengers with a hybrid-electric engine that recharges during flight.
EHang, a Chinese company, produces the only eVTOL that is currently approved for commercial use. Its tiny, two-person autonomous aircraft is conducting limited tourism and sightseeing flights in two Chinese provinces after receiving approval from authorities there. The company also has plans for a longer-range aircraft that can travel between cities.
Wisk, a Boeing-owned firm, is focused on autonomous air taxis, which it thinks will save money by eliminating pilot salaries. The company says it wants to begin unmanned air taxi service in several U.S. cities by 2030.
Volocopter, a German air taxi maker, was originally backed by Mercedes-Benz and Honeywell. It sought to debut its service at the 2024 Olympics in Paris but failed to get its aircraft certified in time and filed for insolvency last year. It has since been resurrected with financial support from China-based Wanfeng Auto Holding Group, according to news reports.
Related
Beta Technologies Hits Stock Market With $1 Billion IPO
11 hours agoNovember 4, 2025
Beta Technologies Seeks to Raise $825 Million in Market Debut
October 17, 2025October 22, 2025
Beta Technologies Builds Out Its Manufacturing Line in South Burlington
October 23, 2024June 9, 2025
Beta Technologies Christens Electric Aircraft Production Plant
October 2, 2023May 3, 2025
Beta to Offer Fixed-Wing Electric Plane With Quicker Path to Market
March 14, 2023August 27, 2024
Beta Technologies Lands Another $375 Million in Venture Funding
April 20, 2022November 18, 2024
Loaded With Cash and Poised to Expand, Beta Technologies Sees Clear Skies Ahead
April 26, 2022October 22, 2024
The original print version of this article was headlined “Beta Technologies Lands on Wall Street | Vermont’s high-flying electric aviation startup scored $1 billion in this week’s stock market debut. Will that be enough to take off?”
