As we reflect on another remarkable year at JetBlue Ventures, we’re proud to share the significant strides we’ve made in strengthening our team, expanding our portfolio, and fostering innovation across the aviation industry.
Growing Our Team
Tori Orr joined our investment team as an associate, where she supports sourcing, due diligence, financial analysis, and portfolio support. Her investment focus spans enterprise tech, travel tech, and climate tech. Before joining JBV, Tori gained experience in early-stage VC roles at Vera Equity, Harlem Capital, and Dorm Room Fund. She also worked at Intel as a Mechanical Design Engineer in Assembly & Test Technology Development and as a Product Manager in Data Center Supply. Tori holds an MBA from The Wharton School, a B.S. in Mathematics from Spelman College, and a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.
We also proudly promoted Eliza Dragomir to Senior Analyst on the investment team, recognizing her outstanding contributions to our success.
Investment Momentum
Our investment activity remains robust, with our team reviewing more than 1,200 startups in 2024. We’ve grown our portfolio to include 56 initial investments and have completed 42 follow-on investments.
Recent additions include innovative companies like ClearJet, Aether Fuels, Wherobots, and Misapplied Sciences, each bringing unique solutions to aviation challenges.
Engaging with the Innovation Ecosystem
This year marked a significant expansion in our industry engagement, with participation in more than 100 events and over 30 speaking engagements.
A highlight was our Founders Summit at our new San Francisco office, featuring influential speakers from General Catalyst, Sageview Capital, Goldman Sachs, and JetBlue.
Our commitment to fostering innovation extended through strategic sponsorships across the industry. We sponsored the GCVI Summit in Monterey, connecting leaders across the corporate venturing ecosystem. In partnership with Sustainable Aero Lab, we co-hosted an impactful session in Redwood City, bringing together sustainable aviation startups with mentors and industry experts.
Our industry engagement continued with sponsorship of Phocuswright’s Web in Travel conference in Singapore and their conference in Phoenix. We’re proud supporters of the Queens Tech + Innovation Challenge, helping early-stage entrepreneurs access grants, industry expertise, and valuable networks.
Education remains important to our team, so we continued supporting NYU’s Tisch Center of Hospitality’s Innovation Hub and became a sponsor of Aviation High School’s robotics team. Also in the vein of educational impact, we sponsored Innovate@Berkeley, Berkeley’s largest entrepreneurship expo.
Last but certainly not least, we sponsored the All Raise VC Summit in Half Moon Bay, supporting female and nonbinary VCs nationwide.
Driving Internal Transformation
Our innovation sprints continue to be a cornerstone of our strategy. These 12-week blocks allow us to introduce different units across the airline to innovative startups. Each sprint starts with meeting with a JetBlue business unit to understand their unique challenges and use cases, which shape the sprint’s theme. The team then works on sourcing startups that fit the theme, narrowing the list down, and then selecting startups to make their pitches to JetBlue leaders at a demo day.
This year, we collaborated with the IT Data and Analytics team and seven business units at JetBlue to run several mini-innovation sprints. These sprints focused on exploring use cases where AI could enhance the crewmember experience and improve efficiency. Among the business units we partnered with were the labor relations, corporate communications, and people and culture teams.
Additionally, we conducted a full-length innovation sprint in partnership with the tech ops team, sourcing over 150 startups offering innovative solutions for various challenges, including improving operational efficiency.
Operations & Partnerships
Our operations team has been hard at work this year by continuing our partnerships with JetBlue’s subsidiary JetBlue Travel Products (JTP) and the broader JetBlue teams. Our operations team has delivered impressive results, introducing 19 new startups to JetBlue and conducting 17 strategic deep dives. The team also successfully helped implement two new proof of concepts.
Portfolio Company Achievements
Our portfolio companies have achieved critical milestones in 2024.
In funding news:
- FLYR secured a substantial $295M Series D round
- NLX raised $15M in Series A funding
- Avnos secured $36M in Series A funding
- Aether Fuels raised $34M in Series A
- Air Company closed a significant $69M Series B round
Strategic moves and partnerships flourished:
- Busbud made two strategic acquisitions: Buson, a Brazil-based bus marketplace platform, and Ratality, a revenue management platform
- Avnos partnered with Deep Sky for gigaton-scale carbon removal in Canada
- i6 established a new agreement with Shell Aviation
- FLYR partnered with Riyadh Air to deliver the world’s first digitally native airline
- Shift5 announced a strategic partnership with Carahsoft
Industry recognition:
- Tomorrow.io was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential Companies
- FLYR won the Skift IDEA award for Operational Streamlining
- Pulsora earned a spot on the ESGFinTech100 list
As we look ahead, JetBlue Ventures remains committed to identifying and supporting transformative technologies that will shape the future of travel. Our growing team, expanding portfolio, and deepening industry engagement position us well to continue driving innovation in 2025.
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