SPEAKERS

Val Miftakhov is Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia, a company developing the world’s most viable hydrogen powertrain for zero emission aviation. ZeroAvia manufacture hydrogen-electric engines for aeroplanes to address a variety of markets, starting with short-haul and eventually up to globe-spanning journeys.

They hold the record for the largest capacity hydrogen-powered aircraft in the world and are on track for commercial operations in 2025, with funding from the likes of Bezos’s Climate Pledge Fund, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shell Ventures and Horizons Ventures, as well as signed partnerships with American Airlines, United Airlines, Alaska Air, Shell and more.

Val is a serial sustainable transportation entrepreneur – his previous company eMotorWerks developed the world’s leading platform for EV battery aggregation to provide grid services, and was acquired in 2017. Prior to that, Val held a number of senior business and product positions at Google and McKinsey & Company, and was a nuclear researcher at Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Val holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University and is an avid helicopter and aeroplane pilot. In 2021, Val was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and in 2023, ZeroAvia was named part of WEF's Unicorn Cohort.