Boeing’s venture capital arm invests in two tech startups

Boeing Co said yesterday that it had launched a venture capital arm which had invested in two tech startups.

Boeing's new division, HorizonX had invested in Upskill, a Washington, DC-based software company that used Google Glass-type eye wear to help assembly workers with complex tasks such as creating wiring bundles for Boeing jetliners.

HorizonX's other investment was in Zunum Aero, a Seattle-area company that was working on electric-hybrid aircraft aimed at bringing down the cost of flying to regional airports.

Zunum had also received funding from JetBlue Technology Ventures, a unit of the New York-based JetBlue Airways Corp.

Boeing was not looking to profit from the ventures directly but it would rather access technology used in autonomous vehicles, machine learning, additive manufacturing and wearable devices, said Steve Nordlund, a Boeing vice president who heads HorizonX, Reuters reported.

"These are all starting to converge and have the potential to fundamentally change how we operate inside and outside of companies," he said.

"I consider us very fortunate to have backers like JetBlue and Boeing," Zunum Aero founder and CEO Ashish Kumar told Business Insider. "We have been engaged with both companies for about a year and both are as passionate as we are in this opportunity to reinvent regional air travel."

Zunum's proposed regional aircraft would fly 10 to 50 passengers and have a range of up to 1,000 miles. According to Kumar the jet would be powered by a battery first series hybrid propulsion system.

This would require the aircraft to be primarily run on battery power with an aviation diesel or turbine range-extending power generator on call if necessary.

As the aircraft was not expected fly until the next decade and would have a service life of roughly 20 years, Zunum had been designing the aircraft to be "future-proof" - meaning the aircraft would be designed in a way that would allow for it to adapt to new technology.