Stellar Labs raises $26.3 million equity funding

Silicon Valley technology company Stellar Labs has raised $26.3 million in Series A equity financing from corporate aircraft financing solutions company Global Jet Capital, Columbia Equity Partners (CEP) and global entrepreneur network Expa. Together with previous equity rounds and funding from Rockwell Collins, Stellar is investing over $50m in its next-generation technology platform for business aviation: a unified, cloud-based operating platform that will combine the flight operations planning functionality of ARINCDirectSM Flight Operations System with Stellar's global distribution systems and commercial operations technology.

“When we founded Stellar in 2014, the industry basically ran on technology built before the internet era,” says co-founder and CEO David Fox. “In commercial aviation, innovations in advanced technologies drove ticket prices down 73 per cent and increased access to regional communities over the last two decades, despite rising fuel prices of 400 per cent.”

“We believe similar efficiency gains can be achieved in business aviation, giving rise to a revolu- tion in access to and use of it by the general public,” adds co-founder Paul Touw.

CEP MDs and co-founders of Mexican airline Volaris Dean Donovan and Brian Flynn have joined Stellar's board of directors along with Global Jet Capital CEO Shawn Vick and TS Capital Partners managing partner David Siegel. “Business aviation is riddled with inefficiencies, from overhead and transaction costs of 40 per cent, to a nearly 38 per cent non-revenue or 'deadhead' rate, to asset utilisation rates one eighth that of commercial airlines,” says Flynn. “Stellar is on the verge of solving these problems and even incremental improvements to these metrics could cut on-demand charter costs by more than one third.”