Technological Advancement AND Electric Flight

Ilham Kadri: [00:00:00] I am so happy to welcome Kyle Clark to the podcast. Kyle is the founder and CEO of Beta Technologies, an aerospace company based environments that builds all electric aircraft. The charging infrastructure that supports it at Syensqo. We are very proud to partner with Beta by providing the advanced materials that make their aircraft lighter and more fuel efficient. Kyle is a true leader in sustainable aviation, a passionate person, and I can't wait to hear what he has to say about the future of electric flight. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Kyle Clark: My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Ilham Kadri: So I always, Kyle, I like to ask my guests where it all began, right? I know you have always loved airplanes. you have always [00:01:00] loved flying, and I hear that every day you fly at least two or three different planes. What, what was it that first sparked the passion of flight? Was it something in your childhood?

Kyle Clark: Yeah, it's a great question. I can't remember a time that I didn't. I wasn't enamored with airplanes. And, there was a small airport, a little bit north of here in Vermont of a gentleman who was bringing eastern block European fighter trainers here. And I would go up and try to help 'em work on 'em just so I could jump in a plane and take a flight.

And I was as interested in the technology and the pieces and the parts that made up the airplane as I was in flying. And his name was George Coy and he was leading the Experimental Aviation Association. up here in Vermont, and, and he, and some of his mechanics took me up early. And the moment, you know, I went upside down, right side up, straight up and down in an airplane, I realized that [00:02:00] it was a whole nother dimension of our world that you could explore.

And the physicality of it and the science of it were just so fascinating that I was hooked.

Ilham Kadri: Wow, so interesting. So it's not only about flying is the materials, is the technology. And fast forward a few years to the moment you flew the maiden flight of Beta technologies, first electric ever aircraft. I think. The first test flights took place at the end of 2024. Right. How did that feel to make your dream a reality, especially when you were the one, the only one to make it fly?

Kyle Clark: Well, it's a great question. We've actually brought five different aircraft to the air the first time, and the one you're talking about was a very special one, just about a year ago, where we brought our first production fixed wing, we call a CX 300 airplane, which is a 7,000 pound. Six passenger aircraft.

And what was so special about [00:03:00] doing the first flight in that aircraft is. It was an aircraft that I got to fly that the people in this building built every single piece of, you know, everything from the computers that control it to the motors that propel it to the energy storage and the batteries all the way up through the structure and everything was built by the people on the ground.

And it was just a magical feeling to lift off the ground in something that was a sketch on a whiteboard a couple years before.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, it's amazing. and, and in a way, I mean, electric obviously was a dream in passenger cars, and Tesla puts a battery on a wheel and. They reinvent full automotive rights, which nobody could see it even back in 2019 when I joined at that time. So, and now we're talking about these, sustainable aviation and electric is starting to progress.

You've flown many planes in your life, I'm sure. What makes [00:04:00] electric kind flights special for you as a pilot? And when did you realize that electric flights was actually possible at all?

Kyle Clark: Well, if we kind of take the different elements of electric flight. Electric flight has been possible for a long time, but it was really driven by the energy density of batteries that allowed all the pieces to come together. And so beta was actually my senior thesis in college more than 20 years ago.

But at the time it was a hybrid electric aircraft. And as I explored and calculated and worked through all the different permutations of the design, what myself and many other people, by the way, converged of, there's a lot of great people doing electric airplanes in this world. They realized that the battery energy density was at a point.

That we could carry sufficient energy for emission, that the power electronics and semiconductors could convert that precious energy into propulsion efficiently. That the computational fluid dynamics could make [00:05:00] an aerodynamic shape, and that the material science, specifically the stuff that you guys make, allowed us to make an empty weight fraction of an airplane that converged on a closing design.

But there's a couple nuances in there. One of 'em is that when we went to vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which is something you can do with distributed electric propulsion, like the structure of the design and the composite structure became stiffness driven. So we had to really rely on the material systems.

To make a stiff, stiff aircraft so that we don't have modals or to places where the aircraft vibrates uncontrollably. And we had to do that while maintaining a very, very strict aerodynamic conforming shape. So it was not just a singular realization like, oh, electric works. It's like you have these four converging technologies that came together and you know, the Air Force and UPS and Amazon and us and Joby and Archer and Vertical and Eve, [00:06:00] we all realized it at the same time about because.

Turns out mother nature is like wildly consistent in our application of physics. And so we said, okay, now the question isn't whether it can be done. It's what's the best way to do it? And, and that's what we all kind of chose our paths and there's been a lot of attrition in this world and industry. And now we're down to the point where, you know, mother nature is gonna be a voting, is gonna have the final vote and the say.

Ilham Kadri: I love it. Mother Nature votes including on, on the technology, right? Progress. So for our audience, Kyle, who might not know. Beta has a great business model because it's focused on both conventional and electric aircraft, like the aircraft you just mentioned, flying and electric vertical takeoffs. You also mentioned the landing aircraft, and in fact, you are working towards certification of your vertical takeoff and landing planes next year.

Right? So can you tell us, and can you tell our audience how these kinds of aircraft change the face of travel, [00:07:00] and in fact, how soon will it be before they are part of our everyday life?

Kyle Clark: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the pace is awesome. it's part of my everyday life and hundreds of people that we've flown with recently. I know we met at the Paris Air Show where we had the honor of opening the Paris Air Show with one of our electric aircraft, and there was a headline in the paper, you know, beta Technologies opens the 2025 Paris Air Show with a silent aerial ballet.

And it was like a really special way to note. How the aircraft flies. So it's interesting. Exactly. A year ago I first flew our first production, CX 300 fixed wing airplane. Just yesterday we crossed a hundred thousand miles. I mean, that's a lot of flying, 300 plus airports. a whole bunch of people have flown, I mean, 20 plus beta pilots and hundreds of people have flown in the aircraft.

But what the, the reaction that I get when we put [00:08:00] people in it is not. Like the novelty of flying electric. It's the visceral difference between a turbine or propel or piston plane and flying with a quiet electric motor. Of course, the engine doesn't make any noise. The engine in our plane is actually at the tail of the airplane, so it's 22 feet behind you when you're flying, so it doesn't make any noise.

It's way behind you. And the conversion efficiency is very, very high, which of course equates to a very, very low noise. So what people notice is instantaneous torque. It's like you turn the throttle and you're immediately moving. And it's very responsive. And then the climb is like really nice, but it's the visibility, the lack of vibration and the quietness takes away all that kind of claustrophobic feeling in a traditional airplane.

And if you look at our aircraft, I mean, there's six and a half foot windows in front of you and you're just kind of out there like a. Bird, and you can hear the [00:09:00] wind like when you change the angle of attack of the airplane, which means you pull the nose up or down, you hear a difference in the wind. You never hear that in a regular airplane.

And it's like, it like, and then it goes sh and you let it down and you load up the wing and it's like you're, you're more connected with the nature around you because you can feel and see and hear, and your senses are alive.

Ilham Kadri: Wow, so silence and even here in the wind, I cannot wait to see that and experience this. So I remember when we met in Paris, obviously I was just flabbergasted by the progress of your progress better, but I've seen in the same show, right? Other companies. So can you tell us what makes it better stand out from the other companies in this space?

Kyle Clark: Yeah, so we've taken a very different track for both the technology development and the entry into service, our calling. To the technical solutions has been simplicity. We take things off the [00:10:00] aircraft, we eliminate every requirement that's not necessary, and we end up with an aircraft that doesn't have all of the, all of the things you think you need to achieve the task.

So it becomes a very, very simple aircraft. Then we break that simplicity down into a couple of discrete steps, like we're in a regulated environment. There is, you know, safety and, and reliability in aviation is paramount. That's why we have to get the best materials and the best electronics. We put those together and make a super reliable airplane.

But what we do is we certify these aircraft through SSA or anac or the FAA in our case. And, and so we've decided to do the stepwise approach to certification when we first certified the propeller. And we got that done in concert with Hartzel. And then we were in the certification of the propulsion, which was almost done. And then the airplane, and then the VTO. So it gives us this stepwise certification path into the market [00:11:00] and allows us to certify things that the FAA knows how to certify before we get to the things that they don't know how to certify. And it's really a one step at a time program, and that's mirrored by our entry into service where we start with medical applications.

Moving organs, blood products, you know, patients. And then we moved to cargo and logistics like UPS and DHL and FedEx and Amazon where the risks and the routes and the variables are lower 'cause you don't have people on the plane. And then we moved to Passenger and that's exactly what we did in our test flying.

And I am proud to say that we became the first company to actually fly with passengers into New York City. We put five people in the plane and I went and flew into JFK, the busiest airspace in the world and, and showed that electric aviation worked in that environment. But this is all part of that progressive entry into service, progressive technology development, all built on that fundamental, and you ask what is the differentiator?

It's the fact that really focus on simplicity and we [00:12:00] focus on a simple, simple design because my philosophy is if it doesn't exist in the airplane, doesn't weigh anything. You don't have to stock it. You never have to certify it. You certainly don't have to conform it and doesn't cost anything, and that's a goodness.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, this is amazing. It's very disruptive. I mean I mentioned many of your qualities, but I think that's disruption in the business model and the way you certify, you know, in phases is just amazing. So what's about the long haul flights, do you think? I mean, the juries out, people think, sustainable aviation fuels are gonna save aviation.

Others believe that there may be some hydrogen. You know, and we, you know, that we are building the aircraft as a company for the nine days tour with, with liquid hydrogen. Do you think that electrification could one day be possible or what the service of sustainable aviation and. Your a EA [00:13:00] platform is also designed as saw it with for cargo and passenger missions, right?

And here scaling the electric aviations, hinges on grid capacity charging logistics, battery lifecycle economics. So tell us a bit more now for the scale up on the single biggest technical or regulatory maybe bottleneck, which can delay industry-wide electrification in your, in your space.

Kyle Clark: Yeah, it's a great, great question. Look, I think one of the key points is that you can't solely tie electrification to battery electrification. Electrification can take many, many different forms. You can get the benefits of electric distributor propulsion motors, whether you store that energy in batteries, hydrogen, or a hybrid system, or any other means of energy storage.

So when I say we're building electric airplanes, it doesn't exclusively mean battery electric airplanes. In fact, we've built and flown hybrid electric aircraft that way, [00:14:00] outperform. Diesel or turbine aircraft because you get the benefits of very high efficiency conversion virgins running these engines at their lowest specific fuel consumption continuously while modulating the power through a small amount of energy storage.

So you get substantial performance increases by electrifying a turbine or a reciprocating engine. and you get all the other benefits around electrification, which we can get into on a self-aware aircraft, and just the pure efficiency and the weight. That aside, I think to answer your question is that absolutely the world is gonna be electric.

Electric is gonna have a major part of the next generation of jet engines the next, and they're gonna be hybrid engines in ways that you may not imagine. So Fran and others, and we have this wonderful partner, GE, that's been talking about this publicly, it is a big part of the engine development in the future now that inherently has some form of energy storage that maybe not be traditional batteries.

That said, let me, let [00:15:00] me just kind of quantify a couple things. The longest range that we've flown our airplane is 336 nautical miles that's sitting in the plane for almost three hours. I don't know about you, but like that's about as long as I want to sit in a six person plane. The point is that you can do a lot of missions, in fact.

I think about 20% emissions are under 300 miles, 20%, and if we can take the carbon out of 20% of the emissions that fly with the technology that exists today, I feel like we're on our way to our mission. And if in another 10 years we've doubled the energy density and remember the number of city pairs goes by the square of the radius that you can fly, right?

You can really start to imagine a future where your electrification takes a big part of flying. All these short missions for cargo and medical and logistics and then regional [00:16:00] passenger air mobility, and then we stop nipping at the heels of the flights that go from New York to Washington to Florida, and those folks have to get better and better and more efficient.

So do I think, I mean, look, I'm an evangelist. I get it all the, I love this stuff and, but I, we will push the technology right up to the limits of physics and we'll bump against it over and over again. But the rules will keep moving. As the technology and the physics allow for it, and we want to be right at the forefront of it,

Ilham Kadri: and I love it. I love your passion and you're a scientist and you push the limits of technology, but you are pragmatic, and I didn't know 20% of the emissions are below, you say 300 miles, right? Uh,

Kyle Clark: Right, right. Obviously along the flight has bigger net emissions, but, but it's still a meaningful amount.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, it's huge. It looks like low hanging fruits and this is what you can do, you know, while commuting around the city or whatever.

So now Kyle, as you know, this postcard is about the power of [00:17:00] and AND how we can hold seemingly opposite tensions like sustainability and profitability in the balance. Right. And you're obviously probably the guest right of the show who really, you know, demonstrate these benefits right to our audience and, leading the way on sustainability with these beautiful electric aircraft. And this was recognized by Time Magazine, which named you as one of the hundred most influential climate leaders. Congratulations. And by the way, we are also so proud to partner with you in the sustainability mission as your aircraft.

That first flight last year was made almost entirely if my information is right with Syensqo’s composite material, which make the aircraft obviously lighter and more efficient. So coming to our [00:18:00] audience. And what advice would you give to any young or less young leader like me about creating businesses that bring sustainable solutions into the world and indeed scale them up to move from the anecdote to mainstream and especially those like you that need a lot of scale up.

Kyle Clark: Yeah, it, so first of all, the things that have made us. I wouldn't say yet successful. We haven't done anything that has materially reduced our emissions as humanity or changed somebody's life. Yet we are on a path to do that. We have developed a technology that has the potential to do it. It may be premature to think that I would be a climate leader.

I hope to get there someday, and that's one of the insights. It's like you have to continue to strive to be the thing that you endeavor to be like this. What's really interesting about aviation is it's an incredibly hard to [00:19:00] abate sustainability problem because you're trying to make something that's super light, super reliable and reliable in many cases means well tested and old, and has legacy and pedigree and all those good words that say I feel safe getting on an airplane.

So you have to overcome, I would consider like a bow wave in front of a big ship going across the ocean. And you need to just power over the bow wave and get over it until you're on that clean water again. And we've built all this mental inertia that's a bow wave here, and it takes a lot of capital and a lot of passion.

And that's where it really matters. And let me give you the insight that I didn't have. But I realized in doing this, which is. People who work and work exceptionally hard and love what they do, they want to attach themselves to a mission. So we only hire people here who care about sustainability, love technology, and care about aviation. If you have those three things and you, and you wanna make the world a better place, you show up [00:20:00] here and you're willing to work exceptionally hard to get that boat over the bow wave because we have regulation, we've got historical precedent and all these things that are keeping us from doing it.

But on the other side, the juice is worth the squeeze and herein lies like the next thing. It's like getting the capital to do it. And I don't know if you know this, but we, we just went public and it was actually. The largest founder, love led industrial IPO of all time, not this year, not this decade of all time.

And we raised one about $1.2 billion in capital to help us get over the bow. And we already had a great balance sheet. So you put all this stuff together, you got people who care what they're doing, you do this. And the last secret sauce is this. We are not pursuing something with a green premi We're not trying to push a technology that doesn't have a financial.

A merit, a merit of financial benefit. And the magic of technologies like industrial heating and aerospace in this case is that the number one operational [00:21:00] cost driver is fuel. If you take the fuel out, you lower the cost. If you take the fuel out, you improve the sustainability. It is both an economic and a sustainable win at the same time, and that.

Is what allows this thing to get some massive legs. And so, so we're, we're driving with the people. We've got the capital who understands the economics and the people are passion, passionate, and driven to the mission. And those pieces together have given us the ability to actually. I mean, to set these world records, to start our production, to have an amazing backlog.

And yes, it takes all those little knits of technology and other things, but ultimately it's the people who care about the mission that drive it forward.

Ilham Kadri: Well, let's talk then kind about culture, right, and people for a moment, because I read somewhere that you give everyone on your team flight lessons so that they really learn what it means to use the products. This is wonderful. So tell me about the culture you really nurture in the company and how that experience shaped your team.

And the inner you, the inner Kyle, what, what leadership habits or mindsets, you've had to unlearn? Because in my company, I push to learn and learn and relearn. So what mindsets you've had to unlearn as beta has grown and how has that change made you a better leader for a scaling team?

Kyle Clark: So, yeah, [00:24:00] culture is so important here, and people ask me all the time, as you scale, aren't you worried about you're gonna, you're gonna lose the culture here and, and the answer is no. And the reason is because we have values that transcend the size of the company. The little nuances of how we implement those may change, and that's what we define as culture.

And we have a couple values. It's your business. Everybody here is an equity holder. We, we value this value thing called enable greatness. That means train the people and care about your colleagues. Stay audacious. Like never, never lose the spirit of being audacious. Challenge each other respectively.

Recognize that risk is required. Take your arms, just wrap it around it and take it on. Like, Sue, look, we're doing something that, that is important and like when we're solving this CL climate problem, we need to put our arms around it and like embrace it. Because the importance of the goal is commensurate with the risk we're willing to take and we're trying to [00:25:00] solve something big, recognizing we're doing something brand new.

And when there are no instructions, just go and write them, build real things, and, and build real things, and then go and fly them and simplify. I already touched on that. And the last most important one is care the most. If you don't care the most out of anybody caring, like it's underrated quality. So if you take all these values and you, and you then say, okay, what culture derives from that?

How do you care about people? How do you enable greatness? So yes, we provide flight lessons for everybody here. Everybody hears a pilot or becoming a pilot, or they had a chance, or they showed up here as a pilot. They're connected with aviation. We have an onsite health clinic with with a doctor and nurses.

We have an onsite pharmacy because the most important thing here is the people. Let's take care of them. We serve lunch every day with organic food, make sure people are healthy. They don't crash in the afternoon. We include everybody's family in every single event we have, so we don't drive a wedge between the people and their [00:26:00] families.

We have environments here that like say, you know what, whatever training you wanna do to make yourself better, that's aligned with the value of enabling greatness. If you're willing to put the effort in, go do it. And so, like this culture it and, and like the, the net result of this film is that. Compared to our competitors or other folks in this industry, we have about half the people, in some cases a third, the people.

And in my estimation, we've done a lot more and we do that 'cause people just care and get after it. It is an important part of our business. Like every single thing we talk about goes through those filters of values.

Ilham Kadri: This is amazing. Amazing. And I love, you know, the enabled greatness and the caring in our companies. So it's really interesting and that those are values which I'm sure resonates with many in the audience. One fascinating fact about you, and we talked about it when we met at the Paris Show, is that you were once a professional hockey player.

It's amazing. [00:27:00] I'm not sure if you play still hockey, but still what's, what's. What did you bring, or, or what do you bring, any lessons from the ice ring to your work at beta? And actually I'm interested by the competitive, you know, maybe sports, how we check the way you handle maybe your leadership in business, your leadership at beta in high pressure moments as a CE.

And is there a mindset from the rank that you still rely on at beta?

Kyle Clark: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, look, you can see a little bit of difference in people. It's not just hockey. People who run marathons and, and stay determined at this stuff. And, and, and also like in these dynamic environments in many team sports, you know, football, hockey, lacrosse, whatever it is, you, you have to defer your own personal gratification to elevate somebody else's. In many cases, if you have, if you're a team player, that's a huge lesson. And it happens when you're young playing sports [00:28:00] and you realize, Hey, I may not be the one that they call out over the large loudspeaker, but I'm proud of the work I did to enable the touchdown, or I'm proud of the work I did to enable the cup.

and then just the grit and tenacity of athletes. That pain, the hard work, the sleepless nights, the unwillingness to take no for an answer, is trained into you because it's celebrated more in sports than it is typically in business. 

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's a, it's a duty, it's moral fiduciary duty in, in such a space to be very,

Kyle Clark: And focus, I gotta share something funny. There's people making, making faces at me in the window here and, and, and, and, and sports. Well, you know, like when I was playing hockey and you got people banging on the glass and you're like, focused. You go in the penalty box. I spent a lot of time in the penalty box and, and, and there people are banging on the glass.

They're insulting. You're pouring beer on you and you're just focused on what you have to accomplish. That's something you learn there as well.

Ilham Kadri: So do you medi, do you do meditation? How, how do you, I mean, how you clean your mind because that, that's, that means less busy minded, which is important for any CEO and including in my seat. How do you do that, Kyle? Share with

Kyle Clark: Well, it's funny, my, the chairman of our company, he, he reminded [00:30:00] me that my golf, my meditation is flying. And so if I get like, pretty stressed out or like start thinking about something, I'll go jump in an airplane and just go and fly and like, and, and just go into the mountains, go out on the lake, do whatever's necessary.

Sometimes like in my particular mood, I'll just go fly an aerobatic routine really hard and you come out and you're like, you're sweating and your, your blood's pumping and you're like, okay, that was like a workout in the air. That's how I do it.

Ilham Kadri: love it. I love it. I know that's flying. I mean, we heard this is actually your passion, and that you even taught your daughter to fly before even she, she learned to drive. I heard, and I love it. But what do you like to do when you are not in the sky or working on your technology on the ground?

Kyle Clark: You know, I've been working a lot at our farm. I like building stone walls. I love building furniture.  [00:31:00] You know, some of that, if I get really anxious or wound up about something, I'll just go out and build something. And, and like, it's funny because my wife would make fun of me because, she's like, I know how to get you to do some work, around the house is I just really piss you off.

And then you'll, you'll, like, instead of saying anything, I'll just go outside and, and, and, I don't know, fix a fence or something. And so I, I, I just, I actually really love working. I, I just like, if I'm not, I can't watch movies. I, I never, and it is funny, even when I was a little kid, I always hated watching movies.

My head was always in the thing that I wanted to do. And, you know, there was a time when I like built every single piece of furniture in our house. because I, I just, you know, I just wanted to do that. And it was, it was the process of it more so than the product. That that I loved.

Ilham Kadri: I love it. I love [00:32:00] it. any last advice for our, young, younger in the audience about, you know. Doing businesses out of dreams and passions like yours, what are the qualities, I think you talked about determination, focus. Is there something else?

Kyle Clark: Yeah, I mean my, one of my, my favorite mentors, Martine Rothblatt, she said something that immediately resonated with me. She said, persistence is omnipotence. And, and the reason that resonated with me is that I was trying to build airplanes since I was in high school and then built a lot of model airplanes and then in college designed airplanes and I wanted to fly so badly.

And then I did beta air as my senior thesis, and then I started pitching it to everybody that would listen to the point that people in my family like, were like, well, you shut up about the damn airplane stuff. And and, but I kept going. I kept going and it took from 2004 to 2017, 13 years. Of pitching the [00:33:00] business and building models and building simulators and working with Austin Meyer at XPLAN to refine the flight models before Martine stepped up and she said, she said, let's do it.

And, and in that time I started other businesses and a family and all the other things. But, but it was, it was persistent and pervasive until somebody said, you know what, I have the other pieces to the puzzle. And, and you know, I'm asked often, do you wish that. You know, the people at your senior thesis said, I wanna invest in that.

And the answer is no. I probably would've screwed it up. 'cause you learn a lot of things failing. And, and to do that for 13 years without a yes. And then to get a yes from Martine and, and look, it took, three and a half, four years from when Martine said yes, and we built our first airplane to get our series A investment.

And in our series A investment, I had 82 no's before I had a yes. And that yes was from Fidelity. And they said, we'll give you a hundred million dollars and give you a billion dollar [00:34:00] valuation. Right outta the gates, and I was like, holy cow. Now right outta the gates after. 17 years of pitching it. Right?

And so that persistence got us there. And then every single step since then, there you, everybody tells you it can't be done. It's too hard, it's whatever. And now we're at the point where it isn't done, and we have the next year is gonna be 10 times harder than last year. Just simply recognizing that. And being excited for the challenge, knowing that you got where you got, you developed the muscle and the toughness and the ability to, to get slapped down enough times that you say, I'm just gonna keep going.

Ilham Kadri: This is amazing and I think. I'm sure, anyone listening is just inspiring. Thank you so much, Kyle, for this fabulous conversation. I learned a lot. I mean, meeting you and listening again, you show us this.

If you dream big, you stay focused. You talked a lot about the focus. The sky is the limit. Thank you for inspiring me, inspiring us.

Kyle Clark: Thank you for having me.