Former Nikola founder Trevor Milton is trying to raise $1B for AI-powered airplanes

It’s been almost a year since Trevor Milton, the inventor of the now defunct electric car called Nikola. to be forgiven and President Trump. Now the Wall Street Journal has released one of the most profound primers yet Milton’s new effort: an attempt to develop autonomous aircraft.

Milton and an “investment group” bought a struggling airline company called SyberJet Aircraft late last year and spent a lot of time trying to get the company off the ground. This includes bringing in “many” former Nikola employees, soliciting potential partners in Saudi Arabia, and spending several hundred thousand dollars on recruiting, according to the report.

He says he wants to develop a new avionics system from the ground up that could help the company create “the first light aircraft to demonstrate an intelligent aircraft,” which could open the door to defense cooperation. But Milton, who was convicted in 2022he told the newspaper that he thought the planes would be “10 times stronger than what Nikola had.”