Congratulations to Lilium!
Today, we congratulate Lilium for successfully listing on the NASDAQ. Founded in 2015 by Sebastian Born, Matthias Meiner, Patrick Nathen, and Daniel Wiegand, we feel privileged to watch Lilium mark the successful transition from private firm to public company.
Not only does today offer a compelling response to the infamous maxim that the technology industry “promised flying cars but only gave us 140 characters”, it also draws into focus the ambition levels of Europe’s founders from across the continent. Lilium’s success demonstrates that the sky really is the limit: it is proof that today’s European ecosystem can not only build cutting edge technology companies solving incredibly hard engineering challenges, it can scale them too.
Gamechanging companies can come from anywhere, but not at any time. Today, the need for companies like Lilium is more urgent than ever. As the full extent of the climate crisis unfolding before us becomes clear, so, too, does the need for transportation solutions to enable a clean, green, and safe future for everyone.
Atomico founder Niklas Zennström pointed to the “breathtaking ambition” that has been at the heart of the Lilium story since the company’s launch in 2015. With planned networks announced in Germany, the United States and Brazil, it is easy to see why. We have been humbled to witness Lilium’s growth from 14 people in 2016, when we first invested at Series A, into the company it is today: a 700+ strong workforce that includes approximately 400 aerospace engineers and a leadership team responsible for delivering some of the most successful aircrafts in aviation history.
From all of us at Atomico, we send our congratulations to the team for a truly remarkable achievement, and we can’t wait to continue to support Lilium in their new life as a public company. Since Atomico was founded in 2006, we have been early backers of companies that aimed to change the world. We have always believed that hard problems breed ambitious founders, and ambitious founders build gamechanging companies. Today, as we toast Lilium’s success with one eye on the horizon, we see no reason to change our mind.
