China's Volant Aerotech raises fresh Series C for its VE25-100

Volant Aerotech, a Shanghai-based eVTOL developer, closed a Series C round of more than $300 million on 27 April 2026, led by Stone Venture, a United Arab Emirates private-equity firm — the first time Stone Venture has backed a company in this sector, and by Volant's account its first investment from a Middle Eastern source. A further, additional tranche of funding was confirmed in early June 2026, reported as supporting the company's target of certifying its aircraft by 2027.

The aircraft behind the raise, the VE25-100, is pitched at the heavy-lift end of the eVTOL market rather than the passenger-taxi segment that dominates most coverage of the industry. It's rated for a maximum takeoff weight of 2.5 tonnes, a payload of up to 500kg, and a flight range of up to 400 kilometres — specifications aimed squarely at cargo and logistics missions rather than urban air-taxi routes, and the aircraft is currently undergoing crewed flight tests.

Neither of the two reports this piece draws on discloses the round's exact size beyond "over $300 million," nor Stone Venture's resulting stake or the company's post-money valuation — gaps worth stating plainly rather than filling with a guess. What is reasonably clear is the strategic shape of the deal: a Gulf private-equity investor making its first eVTOL bet is choosing a Chinese heavy-lift developer over any of the more heavily covered U.S. passenger-taxi names, at a moment when those U.S. names are themselves absorbing a 100% American tariff on imported unmanned aircraft over 25kg that doesn't touch Volant's China-based manufacturing at all.

That tariff context matters for reading the round correctly. Capital that might once have defaulted toward Joby or Archer has reasons, in 2026, to look elsewhere — and Gulf sovereign and private capital in particular has been an active backer of advanced air mobility generally, from Dubai's own vertiport build-out to UAE regulatory approvals for Joby's planned service. Stone Venture's move into Volant reads as that same capital pool diversifying its eVTOL exposure toward a manufacturer it can actually keep buying from without a tariff wall in the way.

A 2027 certification target from a Chinese manufacturer is not, on its own, a particularly aggressive claim: EHang's own EH216-S took roughly 31 months from application to CAAC type certificate, well inside the FAA's five-to-seven-year comparable timeline for a new aircraft category. Whether Volant's heavier, longer-range VE25-100 moves at a similar pace is the thing this fresh funding is meant to buy time and engineering hours to find out.