Airline startup hype goes hypersonic

Even before the COVID-19 era, the delays, cramped seating, and baggage fees made vacations or work trips difficult to stomach. And that’s not even including the flight itself. Four and a half hours to travel from Chicago to San Francisco on a pricey ticket? I’ll pass.

Now imagine the ability to skip from New York to London in 90 minutes, versus the current seven hours. That’s less time than it takes to watch Vivo on Netflix (for those of you without kids, Vivo is an animated film). One venture-backed startup named Hermeus is working to do just that. Earlier this month, the aerospace company inked a whopping $60 million partnership with none other than the U.S. Air Force to begin testing its first aircraft, the Quarterhorse. (In the equestrian world, a quarter horse can run a quarter of a mile in 23 seconds.)

It’s not alone, either. Startups seem to be gaining momentum in their pursuit of much speedier travel. In June, United Airlines agreed to buy 15 aircraft from Boom Supersonic, with the possibility to buy 35 more down the road. Boom is creating what it has said it hopes will be greener and faster—think New York to London in three and a half hours—air travel.

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest estimated in late 2019 that the hypersonic flight market will reach $270 billion in annual revenues. The biggest caveat is, of course, who would be able to pay for such flights, though. ARK’s estimate is based on passengers paying an eye-popping $100,000 to save 13 hours on a hypersonic flight between New York City and Japan. And then there’s the other logistical issue of actually making the planes, which requires a whole lot of funding and a lot of regulatory red tape. Boom, for one, is years behind schedule and has yet to even break ground on a factory, though it says it will open one in 2022.

Both Hermeus and Boom aim to begin carrying passengers by the end of the decade, nonetheless. And while the super-speedy-flight market has been slow to get off the ground, I imagine it eventually will.

Too bad I hate flying.

Declan Harty
@declanharty
declan.harty@fortune.com

NEWSWORTHY

The robots are coming. Late Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that his electric carmaker is working on a humanoid robot that could debut as soon as next year. Standing at five-feet, eight-inches and weighing 125 pounds, the Tesla Bot will be designed to help make physical work an option for humans. It's also being built to be easily overpowered and evaded from, just in case of a robot uprising. 

Porn funding. Venture capitalists seem to be having a hard time getting onboard with OnlyFans, a subscription platform for content creators widely known for pornography. Axios reported Thursday that while the company is projected to grow revenues 220% from 2020 to 2021, investors are unsure about the model—with some fearful about minors on the service while others are barred from investing in adult content. 

Lina Khan gears up. The Federal Trade Commission is going after Facebook again, this time with antitrust expert and FTC Chair Lina Khan in the driver's seat. In a refiled case against the social networking giant, the FTC argued that Facebook's sprawl reaches well beyond that of other platforms. 

Apple delays return to office. With the Delta variant still on the rise, Apple has opted to push back its mandatory in-the-office policy to January 2022 from October. If and when employees return to the office (the plan is for three days per week), they'll be given a heads up of at least a month.

AmazonMart? Now that Amazon has surpassed Walmart as the world's biggest retailer outside of China, it's moving into the department-store business. A Wall Street Journal report Thursday details how the Jeff Bezos-founded e-commerce giant is looking to open several large department store-like stores in the U.S. that will feature everything from clothes to electronics, with the first two expected to be in Ohio and California. 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The good hacker? Mr. White Hat, whoever it is, is becoming an increasingly divisive character in the world of crypto, as fellow Data Sheeter Kevin Dugan wrote in this fantastic story published Friday by New York Magazine's Intelligencer. After orchestrating the largest crypto heist to date from a decentralized finance platform called the Poly Network, Mr. White Hat has managed to keep everyone from Poly to the robbery's victims on edge—begging the question of who they are and what they may do next.

From the article:

Since then, the hacker parked the equivalent of $240 million in a crypto wallet that's purportedly shared with the Poly Network—and then refused to give it the access keys for a week. Mr. White Hat then raised the bar for when he will return the funds, making himself the sole decider of when people will be able to get their own money back. On Wednesday, another $100 million or so was returned—the timing, and the trigger for the rest of the money, remains unknown. The wait has curdled much of the community's goodwill he earned by agreeing early on to return the funds, as people are desperate to get their money back. The White Hat name is starting to look either like crypto Stockholm syndrome, or a ploy in a cat-and-mouse game where the odds of a happy ending are narrowing fast.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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Investors pile into crypto, dump stocks as growth, tapering jitters roil markets by Bernhard Warner

Macy's and Kohl's show signs of a comeback, but the threat of Amazon looms large by Phil Wahba

Sustainability, purpose, and innovation—here's what mattered to CFOs this week by Sheryl Estrada

Disney World will begin charging to skip in line by Chris Morris

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BEFORE YOU GO

An update! On Wednesday, I included a story down here about how members of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team were attempting to flee the country now under Taliban rule.

Well, some of them have since arrived in Qatar, where they will continue their educations. Others do plan to stay in Afghanistan, though, a decision that Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob reportedly acknowledged in a statement could mean a curtailing of their schooling.