Holy shit, who knew Tim Draper and Don Trump shared a tailor? For real though, I can't figure out which of those companies (ALEF or Long Shot) has a higher chance of never building a full scale prototype. It's cheating to bet "both". I have a very good buddy who's involved in the personal aircraft business, and he tells me that no matter how autonomous you make the thing, there's a snowball's chance in hell that the FAA is going to let anyone who isn't a pilot pilot it. Every time you see a dipshit on the side of the road walking to the gas station to get a gas can to fill up their car that they left on the side of the road (and fuckin' hell if I haven't been that dipshit in my younger years), just ask yourself if you want that person flying their car.

I am curious about their modeling, because my understanding back from my fluid mechanics days was the the primary driver of ditching bi- and tri-planes in favor of long single wings was that the drag from the interwing connections was a giant net loss relative to the extra lift they produce. An infinity wing plane doesn't seem that make that an easier problem ("We didn't break the laws of physics, we fooled them" Um, what?).

But to circle back to Long Shot's funding, $1.5M isn't very much given that they were granted a Phase II SBIR. Phase II SBIR grants are worth at least a million and up to 2 in some cases, so it's possible that the got a couple hundred grand from these high profile billionaires, and that gives them good PR and not much more. What's 100K to Sam Altman? I'm currently waiting on the review of a Phase I SBIR and I'm going to be mighty pissed off if I don't get it ($300k) after reading this garbage!

Edit to add that I'd like to hear further thoughts about why betting on sure losers is a positive for VCs. Just as a write off? A tax dodge?