09/2017
The first sketch, in borrowed crayons
Michal Illich founded the company and drew the first shape with crayons borrowed from his kids. An aerospace designer redrew it to what is shown here.
Nine years
Our story
Drawn in 2017, flying since 2018. Every aircraft, every round, every first, with the announcement that dated it.
The record
From a pen sketch to ground test.
05/2018
A two-meter model, to see if it flew
We built a model with a two-meter wingspan and flew it to test the flight characteristics. Common hobby components kept the cost down, which is what made experimenting quickly possible at all.
08/2018
Five meters, and the first registered aircraft
To find out whether the concept scaled, we hired an airplane designer to build a five-meter demonstrator. It flew first as an airplane, then in hover once the VTOL system went on. It was our first uncrewed aircraft registered with the national aviation authority.
10/2018
Pale Fire Capital invests €600k
We went to Jan Barta of Pale Fire Capital for advice on how to raise money. He put in €600k of the fund's own money instead, as a convertible note.
01/2019
Hiring the aerospace team
With funding secured we hired aerospace engineers, aerodynamicists, and software developers. The team grew from six people in the autumn of 2018 to fifteen by the summer of 2019.
03/2019
Kiwi.com invests €200k
Kiwi.com, the Czech company that sells airline tickets, invested €200k and brought what it knows about the air travel industry with it.
05/2019
Motors, controllers and batteries on the bench
We started testing the components for the one-seater demonstrator: electric motors, controllers, batteries. Which ones we chose would set what the demonstrator could do.
09/2019
The wind tunnel checks the math
For a year the aerodynamics existed only as computational fluid dynamics, a simulation. In the summer of 2019 we 3D-printed a model and measured it in the wind tunnel at the Czech Aerospace Research Centre.
2020
The first full-scale airframe
We started building the first full-scale experimental aircraft as a flying wing, uncrewed, to test every component in hover. The plan was to upgrade it afterward to a single-seater.
12/2020
Eleven meters, on the test stand
After the subscale models we built a full-scale demonstrator with an 11-meter wingspan. CAD settles nothing on its own, so every detail went onto a stand and was checked in the metal. Ground testing ran through the first half of 2021.
05/2021
Two angels add €300k
Marek Rosa of GoodAI and Zdeněk Polách of Kaora invested €300,000 between them, joining Pale Fire Capital and Kiwi.com.
Who invested, and how much →
09/2021
The 11-meter demonstrator hovers
On 15 September 2021 the full-scale demonstrator lifted off and held a hover for the first time: eleven meters of wingspan, off the ground.
How the first hover went →
10/2021
€1.3M from six angels
Jaroslav Beck led with €750k, the largest single investment in the company to that point, and five other angels added €550k. Total raised passed €2.4 million, counting conversion of the earlier notes.
01/2022
Zuri 2.0, the second generation
We published the second-generation design, designated Zuri 2.0. It came out of hundreds of hours of development and testing on the full-scale demonstrator and the subscale models.
What changed in Zuri 2.0 →
10/2022
A V-tail, and a new cabin layout
We updated the Zuri 2.0 concept: a V-tail in place of the conventional tail, and a cabin laid out 1+2+2, a pilot and two rows of two.
The V-tail, in detail →
04/2023
A VR cabin at AERO Friedrichshafen
We took a stand at AERO Friedrichshafen, the largest general aviation event in Europe, and built a VR simulator so visitors could sit in the cabin and fly it.
09/2023
Its highest and longest flight yet
A better control system and less weight took the 11-meter demonstrator to its highest altitude and longest duration so far. It also answered pilot commands as quickly as the design asked for.
04/2024
The Skeleton testbed goes on show
We brought a new ground testbed, the Skeleton, to AERO Friedrichshafen. It drew thousands of visitors to the stand, and journalists from well beyond Europe.
12/2024
€3M pre-Series A, oversubscribed
We raised €3 million in an oversubscribed pre-Series A, taking the round to €4.4 million, backed by Jan Barta and Boris Renski among others. It paid for TD 2.0 and its tiltrotors.
The €3M round, in full →
02/2025
A manufacturing chief, and more hands
We hired a chief of manufacturing, a chief marketing officer, an aerospace designer, and an electronics developer, and kept hiring after that: stress engineering, design, project management.
01/2026
The Iron Bird goes up
The systems rig came together in Prague: powertrain and control laws running as one on a frame at aircraft scale, so the whole system could be driven and debugged on the ground before any of it flew. Integration and ground test start here, not on the flight article.
04/2026
The display aircraft goes public
A full-scale display aircraft in TD 2.0's configuration stood on the stand at AERO Friedrichshafen for four days: eight tiltrotors, a new airframe, uncrewed. The flight article was on the shop floor in Prague at the time, wing newly joined to fuselage.
TD 2.0 at the show →
07/2026
The EU space agency writes it up
EUSPA published a success story on VITOLMINS, the Horizon Europe project coordinated by Pildo Labs: Galileo and EGNOS supply the navigation, Copernicus the terrain and obstacle data, so a landing stays safe in poor visibility. Honeywell Aerospace builds the navigation system, and TD 2.0 is the aircraft that will validate it in flight.
The EUSPA story →
Now
In ground test.
TD 2.0 is in systems integration and ground test; the subscale fleet keeps flying, proving flight controllers and configurations before they scale. Next in the air: hover, then transition, then cruise, then the cargo aircraft.
The next entry is a flight.
TD 2.0 is in systems integration and ground test. Follow it as it happens, or read the evidence behind the record.