Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Flying Car
First AI, now flying cars? With one investment bank firm now predicting a $9 trillion market by 2050, will companies be caught off guard?
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a drone. No, wait! It’s none of those things—it’s a flying car.
You read that right. Much like AI and humanoid robots, flying cars are quickly evolving from a concept existing only in our imaginations into a reality that’s just a few breakthroughs away from being commercialized. That’s the thinking on Wall Street, at least. In a recent report, one major investment bank estimated that flying cars could grow into a $9 trillion market by 2050, which isn’t that far-fetched when considering how fast AI-driven technology is developing. “There is real investment in the sector, and some companies are getting close to commercialization,” says John Buechli, a principal in the automotive and manufacturing sectors of Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial practice, who estimates that the flying-car market is roughly at the point where self-driving cars were a decade ago.
That’s still more developed than most people realize, and even ahead of some experts’ expectations, says Buechli. Following successful passengerless pilot tests in 2025, one flying-car company is scheduled to start commercial passenger service in Dubai this year, and similar programs are underway in the US through the FAA. The money has followed the technology: To date, the industry has raised nearly $500 million in venture-capital funding in 2026. Over the last five years, that figure rises to more than $6.5 billion. For comparison, at the height of their hype in 2021, EVs collected $19 billion in funding, and self-driving cars, in the course of a massive expansion this year, have raised more than $20 billion. "If flying cars become a meaningful transportation category, it would also create an ecosystem of new jobs, skills, infrastructure, and businesses around it," says Jonathan Kestenbaum, a managing director in Korn Ferry's AMS business. of Korn Ferry's AMS business.
It’s not hard to see the value of flying cars. For instance, they would certainly help urban planners deal with traffic congestion. Meredith Moot, a senior client partner in the Logistics, Distribution, and Transportation sectors of Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial practice, says flying cars would help her clients address key challenges like a lack of drivers (some flying cars are autonomous), access to rural areas, and freight costs. For those reasons, big-box retailers, warehouse-delivery providers, and cargo-fleet operators have been among the biggest customers for electric vehicles and earliest adopters of drones and other delivery methods. So far, though, firms haven’t been as quick to get on board with flying cars. According to Moot, her logistics clients are watching how the flying car market evolves, but aren’t doing any real business planning for it yet. “Viability is still a stretch,” she says.
Brad Marion, leader of the automotive sector in Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial Market practice, says this caution is warranted, noting that when it comes to new car innovation, firms have been down this road before. “We only have to look at EVs to see that market growth and commercial viability predictions don’t always pan out,” he says, observing that sales of EVs have fallen considerably in the US in recent years. To be sure, whether it’s electric vehicles, self-driving cars, or flying cars, technology moves faster than the infrastructure needed to support the market. Moreover, says Marion, the regulatory, cost, and safety issues for flying cars are likely to be as challenging, if not more so, than those for EVs and autonomous cars.
Buechli similarly thinks public perception of flying cars is being shaped by existing resistance to EVs and self-driving cars, as well as broader fears of AI. “People are curious about flying cars, but it will probably be a while before they get in one themselves,” he says.
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