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📰 Boom's Supersonic Success

📰 Boom's Supersonic Success

Pipedream's Underground Route, Godspeed's Flying Car Composite, Pelion's Fresh $500M, ETFs to Watch and More

Riley Rosebee
February 01, 2025

✨ Welcome

Welcome to The Godspeed Weekly.

This week, we’re reviewing Boom’s supersonic success, Pipedream’s underground route, the FAA’s request for comments, a few charts and more.

Onward…

🛫 Boom’s Supersonic Success

We witnessed history! On January 28, 2025 Boom’s demonstrator aircraft, XB-1, broke the sound barrier making it the first civil supersonic jet made in America.

Folks, we’ve entered into a new era.

Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl shared,

XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived. A small band of talented and dedicated engineers has accomplished what previously took governments and billions of dollars. Next, we are scaling up the technology on XB-1 for the Overture supersonic airliner. Our ultimate goal is to bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone.

Boom, we salute you. 🫡

Browse the official press release here.

📦 Pipedream Goes Underground

Pipedream Labs seeks to propel hyperlogistics. The Austin-based startup, founded in 2020, aims to deliver goods to urban neighborhoods in 10 minutes or less.

Last April, the underground start up raised $13M and installed a 0.7 mile route proving its thesis.

Yesterday, Pipedream’s CEO, Garrett Scott called upon the community to recruit. His thread went viral exceeding 1M views!

At @pipedream_labs , we're building the internet for atoms.
Not as a concept, but as a real, citywide network starting this year. Our goal is to help make 15 min delivery possible for everything & everyone.
Here's what we've been up to this last year to make this happen:
— Garrett Scott 🕳 (@thegarrettscott)
5:44 PM • Jan 31, 2025

See the full thread here.

📈 Godspeed’s Flying Car Composite

The Godspeed Flying Car Composite favored Flying Cars vs. American Automakers due to $GMs lack lucker Q4 earnings report. Here’s the weekly performance…

🛸

$ACHR - Archer Aviation -5.22%

$JOBY - Joby Aviation -5.71%

🚙

$F - Ford Motor -0.40%

$GM - General Motors -8.25%

And the weekly ratio chart — Flying Cars ($ACHR + $JOBY) // American Automakers ($F + $GM).

This ratio has yet to break out. If / when it does - is that the end of the automobile era? Place your bets…

If you have question reading this chart, please email me at [email protected].

🇺🇸 US Space Force Sees Space Demand

The U.S. Space Force foresees spaceport launch traffic increasing 25% - 30% a year for the next few years.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive office for assured access to space at Space Systems Command (SSC) shared,

“We’ve been going up pretty steadily at about a 25 to 30% increase per year, and I think we’ll continue to increase at that rate for at least the next couple years.”

We love to see it. Here’s Aviation Week with more.

🛸 Where’s My Flying Car?

We recently reviewed the publicly traded eVTOL manufacturers - Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation, but there are private players worth watching…

LEO Flight was founded in 2020 by electric propulsion and automotive design experts Pete Bitar and Carlos Salaff.

The Indiana-based company plans initial production of its LEO Solo, a single-seat eVTOL, in late-2025 and seeks investors to build full-scale prototypes of its two-passenger LEO Coupe.

Here’s the single-seat eVTOL.

And the LEO Coupe concept.

Learn more about LEO here.

🏦 Industry ETF Insights

Things are happening so fast - it can be challenging to identify the progression of these major trends.

I curated 14 ETFs that provide exposure to industries heavily affected by the confluence of our emerging technologies. See the ETF set below.

And I’d like us to review a few notable charts…

The Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF, $AIQ was the best of the bunch. The AI ETF shrugged the DeepSeek head fake and closed just shy of an all-time weekly high.

Check out the weekly chart.

See $AIQs fact sheet here.

Blackrock recently released an iShares A.I. Innovation and Tech Active ETF, $BAI. This week, it witnessed its highest weekly volume since inception. This behavior is not bearish.

Here’s the weekly chart.

Learn more about $BAI here.

🏔️ Pelion’s Fresh $500M

Pelion Venture Partners raised $500M for its 8th venture fund, reinforcing its commitment to backing entrepreneurs in Utah and the surround areas.

Utah’s tech scene has grown exponentially and Pelion believes more growth is in store.

Pelion partner Tyler Hogge commented,

Early on, we often felt like we had to sell “around” Utah to our potential LPs, who were uncertain that a real tech ecosystem could thrive here. But as Utah’s ecosystem has grown exponentially, the narrative has completely shifted: some of the world’s best LPs now see Utah as an ecosystem that can produce many billion-dollar startups, and they are excited to support it.

We believe something special is happening in Utah. In our two most recent funds, we’ve found that about 50% of our investments have a Utah tie (Divvy, LVT, Nursa, Neighbor, Redo, Torus, and many others) and we expect that trend will continue with Fund 8.

Read Pelion’s press release here.

📨 The FAA Requests Comments

The Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation have requested comments while renewing the Fractional Ownership program to increase access to aircraft ownership.

Written comments must be submitted by March 31, 2025. Here’s the federal register with more.