JetZero Breaks Ground on Z4 Factory in North Carolina

JetZero has broken ground on its first aircraft factory, an eight-million-sq-ft plant at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the Long Beach, California-based company will produce its Z4 blended-wing-body airliner.

Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony on June 15, state officials called the project the largest economic development commitment in North Carolina history. JetZero expects to invest $4.7 billion and create more than 14,500 jobs in Guilford County over the next decade, supported by what the company described as the largest state incentive package ever offered to a start-up in any industry.

“Today we are the future of flight,” remarked North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein. He noted that the state’s aviation industry already contributes about $88 billion a year to its economy and is home to more than 400 aerospace companies. JetZero’s investment is projected to lift the state economy by more than $250 billion. State leaders have cast the project as a defining wager on North Carolina’s aerospace future—one whose payoff, like the Z4 itself, still depends on milestones the company has yet to clear.

The Z4 is a 250-seat airplane aimed at what JetZero calls the underserved middle-of-the-market commercial segment, with a range of up to 5,000 nm. Its blended-wing-body shape, which the company refers to as “all-wing,” merges the wings and fuselage so the full body produces lift, a configuration JetZero says will cut fuel burn by up to 50% compared with conventional tube-and-wing jets. The company forecasts entry into service in the early 2030s.

Groundbreaking Precedes First Flight

JetZero is committing to large-scale manufacturing before it has flown a full-scale airplane. The company’s first full-scale demonstrator—now being assembled by Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites at the Mojave Air & Space Port—is expected to fly in 2027. It cleared a critical design review in May 2025. 

The demonstrator will fly on a pair of Pratt & Whitney PW2040 turbofans, though JetZero has not yet named an engine for the production airplane. A subscale model under JetZero’s Pathfinder program has been flying test sorties from Edwards Air Force Base in California since 2024.

Co-founder and CEO Tom O’Leary said the demonstrator is about half-built and defended the decision to break ground so early in the program’s development. “We had to be able to compress timelines—time is money,” O’Leary told AIN. “As a venture-backed start-up, investors want to see you accelerating that time frame.” Standing up the factory in parallel with flight testing, he said, lets the company push design, production engineering, and the manufacturing site forward at once rather than in sequence. To do that effectively and efficiently, the company works with digital twins of the aircraft as well as the factory.

The blended-wing-body concept is not new. NASA has funded its development since the 1990s, and JetZero co-founder and chief technology officer Mark Page has worked on the configuration ever since. JetZero’s pitch leans on that maturity: the Z4 is designed around existing, certified systems and off-the-shelf engines rather than unproven propulsion. That choice, the company argues, keeps the airplane inside today’s certification and airline operating frameworks.

FAA Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau, who attended the groundbreaking, said the FAA would work with JetZero toward a type certificate and then a production certificate for the Greensboro facility, and that the effort is already underway within the FAA office that certifies large transport airplanes. “We’re moving with a renewed focus on digitizing the overall certification process,” he said.

O’Leary said JetZero has spent more than four years in a familiarization process with the FAA and wants to bring the regulator into its digital design environment to make certification more transparent. “New can be better, and that’s what we’re here to show with the FAA,” he told AIN.

Defense Roots

In 2023, the U.S. Air Force awarded the company a $235 million contract to build and fly the full-scale demonstrator: a KC-46-size aircraft meant to mature blended-wing-body technology for potential tanker and airlift use. 

The company says the all-wing design would let a tanker carry up to twice the fuel of the Air Force’s current Boeing KC-46 on a maximum-range mission, and it estimates that converting the service’s tanker, transport, and bomber fleets to the configuration could cut annual fuel costs by about $1 billion. 

Sen. Ted Budd, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, framed the Z4 as a national security asset while speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony. “Whether it's commercial air travel or high-stakes military operations, the aircraft is a force multiplier and helps overcome the tyranny of distance, particularly in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

However, those military prospects remain unsettled. Air Force officials have said the Z4 has no inside track to win a future tanker or airlift competition, and the demonstrator is not formally tied to the service’s Next Generation Air-refueling System or Next Generation Air Lifter programs. The latest budget request included no additional money for the Z4.

Airlines Bet Big on BWB

Three major U.S. carriers have lined up behind the Z4 program. United Airlines invested in 2025 and signed a conditional agreement to buy as many as 100 Z4s, with options for 100 more, contingent on the demonstrator flying in 2027 and the airplane meeting United’s requirements. Delta Air Lines is contributing operational and cabin-design input through its Sustainable Skies Lab.

Alaska Airlines, the program’s first airline investor, reaffirmed its support at the groundbreaking ceremony. “We remain committed to this program, not only as investors but as operators,” said Alaska head of corporate development Pasha Saleh. JetZero has raised more than $1 billion and has said it may seek government loans to carry the Z4 to market.

JetZero is not the only company betting on the shape. Natilus, a San Diego start-up founded in 2016, is developing its own blended-wing-body aircraft: the Kona, an optionally piloted regional freighter, and the Horizon, a roughly 200-seat airliner aimed squarely at the Boeing 737 Max and Airbus A320neo. Natilus says the Horizon would burn about 30% less fuel than today’s narrowbodies and reports a backlog it puts at more than 500 aircraft, though it has not disclosed most of its customers and has yet to fly a full-scale design. Like JetZero, it plans to use existing engines and is searching for a U.S. production site.

Both companies face the same open questions—engine selection, range, and how to build a blended-wing airplane at full scale—and both are wagering that airlines want an alternative to the Airbus-Boeing narrowbody duopoly. Earlier efforts hint at the difficulty: Boeing and NASA flew the subscale X-48 between 2007 and 2012 but never put a blended-wing airliner into production. Bombardier has been studying the configuration through its EcoJet research program.

Building a Workforce

JetZero is designing the Greensboro plant with digital and AI tools developed with Siemens and Deloitte, building a digital twin that simulates how machines, people, and materials move through the building before any concrete is poured. The team claims this approach will make Greensboro the most efficient and adaptable aerospace plant of its kind anywhere in the world. O’Leary explained that the team will model production in a virtual environment—running on Nvidia and Amazon Web Services infrastructure—millions of times before the first aircraft is assembled.

“By pairing advanced AI and digital tools with our deep operational and industry experience, we’re helping JetZero set a new standard for manufacturing speed, quality, and scale,” said Deloitte chief client officer Kelly Herod. “Our work with JetZero brings automation and AI together with data strategies informed by our experience at The Smart Factory by Deloitte @ Wichita—connecting design, the shop floor, and the workforce.”

Filling 14,500 jobs in the Triad is among the project’s major challenges. JetZero has committed $30 million to the North Carolina Community College System to build a customized training pipeline, and the state has enrolled the company in workforce efforts that include a push to train 25,000 electrical workers over the next decade. Guilford Technical Community College, which broke ground on an aviation center last year, is expected to help feed the plant.

To reach students earlier, JetZero and Deloitte are bringing Deloitte’s Believers program to Greensboro in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Guilford County Schools, and the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce. The year-long effort aims to reach about 5,000 students and educators in Guilford County and opens this summer with an eight-day educator workshop covering robotics, AI, and engineering. Since 2022, Believers has reached more than 35,000 students across 195 schools, Deloitte said.

Within the Greensboro campus, JetZero is also working with local architecture firm Cline to renovate a 108,000-square-foot building that will serve as its future headquarters. The new facility, which JetZero calls “The Hub,” is slated for completion in early 2027.

Until little more than a decade ago, the ground now cleared for JetZero’s factory held an 18-hole golf course, a cigarette warehouse, and a forklift plant, Piedmont Triad Airport Authority executive director Kevin Baker recalled at the groundbreaking ceremony. Baker closed his remarks by handing O’Leary a golf club from his son Ryan—who once played the par-three fourth hole that sat on the site and now designs airports—inscribed “hole four to Z4.”