Efforts to resurrect insolvent eVTOL aircraft developer Lilium appear stalled as prospective investors at the Ambitious Air Mobility Group (AAMG) seek to find a way through the legal complexities and plan to acquire the company’s assets, intellectual property, and facilities. The Netherlands-based company has said it could invest up to €750 million ($880 million) to resume work on the aircraft while also seeking new revenue streams, including new military applications and allowing third parties to use Lilium’s test facilities at Oberpfaffenhofen in southern Germany.
According to Robert Kamp, AAMG’s CEO, it is proving difficult to agree on terms with the German administrator handling Lilium’s insolvency, in part due to potential disputes with creditors over around one-third of all the assets. AAMG has indicated that it has €250 million in capital lined up for an initial investment with access to an additional €500 million for longer-term plans.
Kamp told AIN that it has not yet been possible to finalize the required asset purchase agreement because this would have required AAMG to pay a €20 million deposit without a full assurance that the assets could be acquired with no strings attached. With support from expert German insolvency lawyers, the group is now exploring options for a bank-backed guaranteed instrument, and has offered to cover €760,000 in rent payments due on the Oberpfaffen site.
AAMG first made an offer to acquire Lilium in the fall of 2024. Now, it is urging the administrator to release full information about what remains of Lilium, which was shut down in February after an earlier buy-out attempt fell apart, and with the high cost of sustaining a payroll for 1,250 employees no longer a liability.
“At the time of the insolvency, we made an offer but decided not to proceed,” Kamp explained. “We saw the assets as a waterfall of unclear things because no one seemed to know where they were, and the running costs then were unbelievably high—around €30 million per month and with no cash flow for the next year coming in, so we had to step back.”
Creditors May Claim Some Assets
Among the concerns for prospective buyers of what remains of Lilium are that there could be creditor claims against some of the assets and that key software might be blocked. According to Kamp, in the latter stages of its existence, Lilium was so “hungry for capital” that it had to take out loans, and in some instances, suppliers were not paid. Potentially, he believes, ownership of around one third of Lilium’s assets might be in dispute.
AAMG’s connection with Lilium began as a customer, and in December 2024—when the manufacturer’s survival was already in doubt—it signed firm orders for eight Lilium Jets with options for another six. According to Kamp, the company had plans to acquire up to 32 aircraft, which it planned to use for air taxi networks in Spain, France, Italy, and the Benelux countries.
According to Daniel Hayes, who is involved with AAMG as a consultant, the extensive engineering infrastructure at Lilium’s Oberpfaffenhofen site could become a revenue stream if made available for use by other advanced air mobility companies. These include acoustics and battery laboratories, as well as production equipment including autoclaves and computer numerical control machines.
Increasingly taking the view that type certification of eVTOL vehicles for commercial air taxi service could take more time than some in the sector anticipate, the AAMG team nonetheless believes it could press ahead with completing the first four examples of the Lilium Jet, which are at different levels of maturity. The company is in discussions with EASA about how it might be able to preserve Lilium’s design organization approval.
“Then we would face a decision, do we go for certification [of the original eVTOL concept] or focus on new opportunities, such as the high demand we now see from NATO for unmanned aircraft with this sort of performance profile,” explained Hayes, who is chief commercial officer with research group UCR and director of venture capital with Intraday Group.
In the first instance, efforts to reach an agreement with Lilium’s administrator remain the priority, with AAMG saying it now has backing from a major bank in the Netherlands. The company says some former Lilium employees have been in touch to express interest in future work, and there remains the possibility that other bidders may show their hand.
“Some other companies might not want Lilium to come back into the market,” Hayes suggested. “We have to build trust [with the stakeholders] and assess what could be onerous terms [for acquiring the assets].”