It has been almost exactly one year since Trevor Milton, the founder of the now-bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola, was pardoned by President Trump. Now, the Wall Street Journal has published one of the first deep dives into Milton’s new effort: trying to build autonomous planes.
Milton and an investment group purchased a downtrodden aviation company called SyberJet Aircraft late last year. Since the purchase, he has spent his time trying to turn the company around. According to the report, this involves bringing in dozens of former Nikola staff, soliciting possible investors from Saudi Arabia, and spending a few hundred thousand dollars on lobbying.
He reportedly wants to design an entirely new avionics system from the ground up. This system would help the company create what it calls the first light jet to focus on artificial-intelligence flight, which could open the door for defense contracts. Milton, who was convicted of fraud in 2022, told the newspaper that he believes planes will be ten times harder than Nikola ever was.