Is Hermeus a Publicly-Traded Company?

When the Wright brothers first imagined that men could fly, they probably didn't think about the commercial applications of their soon-to-be miraculous invention. Nowadays, one can hardly imagine the words airline or airplanes without also conjuring up their inseparable connection to the almighty dollar. 

Aeronautical engineering has come a long way since then. Right now, an up-and-coming aerospace technology company called Hermeus is at the forefront of new development in that space. Hermeus’s government connections and recent efforts to develop an aircraft capable of flying more than five times the speed of sound haven't gone unnoticed by the financial world. 

Hermeus is a fairly new transportation company, but new doesn't mean green. The company came on the scene in 2018 with the goal of transforming the global transportation network. Using lessons Hermeus learned from working at a number of NewSpace companies, the engineers have successfully developed a Mach 5 commercial aircraft capable of connecting people all over the world by massively reducing flight times. 

For scale, that means that Hermeus’s Mach 5 aircraft can fly five times faster than the normal commercial airliner. The company's promise is that using this aircraft will create a potential trillion dollars in economic growth over the next few years. The promise has been raising some very important eyebrows. 

Hermeus’s initial investor was a company called Khosla Ventures. The Menlo Park-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, biotechnology, healthcare, and clean technology sectors. Revolution, another venture capitalist, is also one of Hermeus's investors. Perhaps the most impressive of Hermeus’s handful of investors is the United States Air Force. 

In July 2019, Hermeus won a United States Air Force contract to develop a presidential jet that can travel at Mach 5. The hypersonic Air Force One could fly from New York to Paris in just 90 minutes. Just because the company is close to completing the task, doesn't mean that it's on the verge of discovery. Right now, this feat of engineering is at least 10 years away from becoming a reality.

Recently, NASA’s aerospace and defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, was given a $241.5 million contract to develop a quiet supersonic plane that could fly by mid-2022. Around the same time, Boeing attended the Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and unveiled its plans for a hypersonic plane. Even Boom Technology and Virgin Galactic have attempted to reach past Mach 2.2, although it seems that newcomer Hermeus is the closest. 

Hermeus isn't a public company yet. As more people take notice, it's just a matter of time before the company goes public. Hermeus’s ingenuity, market presence, leadership, financials, and overall desirability make it a company to watch in the coming years. Amid all of the current challenges around the globe, it's uplifting to see a company with such amazing ideas and what looks like a bright future.