Few companies in American aviation have had a more turbulent journey than SyberJet Aircraft. It has survived bankruptcy, changed its name multiple times, passed through the hands of Taiwanese investors, Dubai billionaires, and Utah manufacturers — and now, in 2026, it is led by one of the most controversial and talked-about figures in American business: Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola Corporation. If you want to understand who owns SyberJet today, you need to understand the wild, decades-long ride that brought it here.
What Is SyberJet Aircraft?
SyberJet Aircraft (SJA) is an American aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, near Chandler Municipal Airport, with additional engineering offices and manufacturing facilities in San Antonio, Texas, and offices in Cedar City, Utah. The company specializes in designing and manufacturing light business jets — aircraft known for extraordinary speed, long range, and fuel efficiency.
SyberJet’s flagship product is the SJ30 — long described as the world’s fastest and longest-range light business jet, with a top speed of Mach 0.83 (486 knots / 560 mph) and a range of 2,500 nautical miles. The aircraft maintains sea level cabin pressure up to 41,000 feet and has a maximum flight ceiling of 49,000 feet — performance numbers that rival jets costing far more. The company is currently developing the all-new SJ36, targeting certification by 2032.
Who Owns SyberJet in 2026?
SyberJet Aircraft is privately owned by an investment group led by Trevor Milton — the Utah-born entrepreneur who founded Nikola Corporation, was convicted of securities and wire fraud in 2022, and received a full presidential pardon from Donald Trump in March 2025.
Trevor Milton is both the CEO and a member of the investment group that acquired SyberJet. Accounts of exactly when the acquisition closed differ across sources — AVweb reported the group purchased the company in 2024, the Wall Street Journal placed it in late 2025, and PitchBook records the acquisition date as March 18, 2026. What is clear is that Milton was officially appointed CEO in October 2025, just weeks after the SEC dropped its fraud case against him following his presidential pardon.
SyberJet is a private company — it is not publicly traded, and its full ownership breakdown and investor names beyond Milton have not been publicly disclosed.
Ownership and Key Stakeholders Table
| Owner / Party | Role | Stake | Key Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Milton’s Investment Group | Controlling Owner | 100% of SyberJet Aircraft | Private acquisition closed 2024–2026; exact group members not publicly disclosed |
| Trevor Milton | CEO & Investment Group Member | Significant personal stake | Pardoned Nikola founder; appointed CEO October 2025 |
| MT, LLC (Metalcraft Technologies) | Previous Owner | Exited to Milton’s group | Owned SyberJet from April 2011 until recent acquisition |
| Emirates Investment & Development Corp. | Former Owner (2008–2011) | Exited via bankruptcy | Acquired as Emivest Aerospace; filed bankruptcy October 2010 |
| Sino Swearingen Aircraft Corporation | Former Owner (1995–2008) | Exited | Taiwan-based group rescued the SJ30 program in 1995 |
| Ed Swearingen | Original Founder | No current stake | Founded Swearingen Aircraft in 1959; original creator of the SJ30 |
The Origin Story: One Engineer, One Revolutionary Jet
The story of SyberJet begins not with an investment group or a corporate merger — but with one extraordinarily talented aviation engineer from San Antonio, Texas.
Ed Swearingen founded Swearingen Aircraft in 1959. He was a legendary figure in American aviation — a self-taught engineer who modified and improved existing aircraft designs so effectively that manufacturers like Beechcraft paid him to do it for their own products. His crowning achievement was the SJ30 — a sleek, swept-wing light business jet that promised performance no aircraft in its class could match.
The design effort reached its logical conclusion with the Metro series of 19-seat airline aircraft, the first of which had its first flight on August 26, 1969. By this time the company was in financial difficulties and lacked the resources to certify and produce the SJ30 alone. Swearingen needed a partner — and that is where the ownership story gets complicated.
The Long Road Through Five Different Owners
SyberJet holds the record for one of the most convoluted ownership histories in American aviation. Here is how the company changed hands again and again before Trevor Milton arrived.
Swearingen Aircraft (1959–1995) was the original era — Ed Swearingen designed the SJ30 but ran into financial trouble trying to bring it to market independently.
In 1995, a Taiwanese rescue arrived. Lockheed arranged a joint venture between Swearingen and Taiwanese investors as part of an offset agreement related to Taiwan’s purchase of F-16 fighters. The new company — Sino Swearingen Aircraft Corporation — stretched the original jet’s fuselage by 4.3 feet into the improved SJ30-2, which received FAA certification on October 27, 2005, and made its first delivery in November 2006. Production was slow and expensive, and Sino Swearingen struggled financially.
In August 2008, Dubai investors — specifically the Emirates Investment and Development Corporation — acquired Sino Swearingen and renamed it Emivest Aerospace Corporation. Production ceased in November 2009 and the company filed for bankruptcy on October 26, 2010.
In April 2011, assets were sold to MT, LLC of Cedar City, Utah — a company connected to Metalcraft Technologies, the firm that had been supplying SyberJet’s aft fuselage components. The company was renamed SyberJet Aircraft and planned to restart production. Only nine SJ30 aircraft were ever delivered across the jet’s entire history.
Trevor Milton: The Controversial New Owner
No article about SyberJet in 2026 is complete without telling the full story of Trevor Milton — because his personal history is now inseparable from the company’s future.
Trevor Robert Milton was born on April 6, 1982, in Layton, Utah. He founded Nikola Corporation — an electric and hydrogen truck company — and briefly became a billionaire when the stock soared following Nikola’s public listing via SPAC in 2020. But the company’s stock collapsed after a research firm released a damning report alleging the company had misled investors, including staging a promotional video to make it appear one of its trucks was driving under its own power when it was actually rolling downhill.
Milton was convicted of securities and wire fraud in 2022 and sentenced to four years in prison, a $1 million fine, and $168 million in restitution. He and his wife had donated more than $3.2 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. In March 2025, President Trump granted him a full unconditional pardon, which erased his conviction, his prison sentence, and his financial penalties. The SEC subsequently dropped its fraud case against him with prejudice in September 2025.
Within weeks of the SEC dropping its case, Milton announced he had acquired SyberJet and was named CEO in October 2025. “The hell I went through for the last five years being indicted for something I didn’t even do,” Milton said publicly. “Now, I get to come back and I get to bring all those skills and I get to transform the aviation industry.”
The SJ36: Milton’s Big Bet on AI-Powered Flight
The centerpiece of Trevor Milton’s vision for SyberJet is the all-new SJ36 — a nine-seat, single-pilot light jet that the company is positioning as the most technologically advanced aircraft ever certified in its class.
The SJ36 is targeting FAA certification by 2032 and is expected to be the fastest light jet ever certified at Mach 0.88 — faster than the already impressive SJ30. The jet is designed to fly Los Angeles to Hawaii nonstop or New York to Los Angeles nonstop — routes that no other light jet can cover without stopping to refuel. It is priced at approximately $14 million.
Beyond the performance specs, Milton is pitching the SJ36 as the first light jet designed specifically for AI-powered flight — including a completely new avionics system being built from scratch. The company is also exploring the potential for autonomous military aircraft, and has spent $490,000 on lobbying since June 2025 to promote AI-based flight systems to the U.S. government. Milton has also been courting investors in Saudi Arabia, appearing at a Saudi investment forum in November 2025.
To fund all of this, Milton is seeking to raise $1 billion at a reported $4 billion valuation — an extraordinarily ambitious target for a company that has delivered only nine aircraft across its entire history.
The Speed Record: A Statement of Intent
Just weeks before this article was written, SyberJet made headlines by claiming an unofficial speed record that signaled the company under Milton is serious about performance.
SyberJet’s SJ30-2 completed a nonstop flight from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Diego on August 18, averaging 505.3 mph over approximately four hours and seven minutes. The company claims the flight broke a 13-year-old record in the C-1f aircraft weight class — landplanes weighing between 6,000 and 9,000 kilograms — previously held by an Embraer Phenom 300 at 339.4 mph, set in 2013. That would represent a 48.9% improvement over the prior mark. SyberJet is awaiting certification from the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), a process estimated to take approximately 90 days.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. Who owns SyberJet Aircraft in 2026?
SyberJet is privately owned by an investment group led by Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola Corporation, who also serves as CEO.
Q2. When did Trevor Milton take over SyberJet?
Milton was appointed CEO in October 2025 and joined the investment group that acquired SyberJet, with the acquisition recorded by PitchBook as March 18, 2026.
Q3. Who originally founded SyberJet?
SyberJet traces its roots to aviation engineer Ed Swearingen, who founded Swearingen Aircraft in 1959 in San Antonio, Texas.
Q4. Is SyberJet publicly traded?
No. SyberJet Aircraft is a fully private company and is not listed on any stock exchange.
Q5. What is the SyberJet SJ36?
The SJ36 is SyberJet’s new nine-seat, single-pilot light jet targeting FAA certification by 2032 at a price of approximately $14 million and a top speed of Mach 0.88.
Q6. How many SyberJet aircraft have been delivered?
Only nine SJ30 aircraft were ever delivered across the company’s entire history — reflecting decades of production and funding challenges.
Q7. Did Trevor Milton receive a pardon before taking over SyberJet?
Yes. President Donald Trump granted Milton a full unconditional pardon in March 2025, erasing his 2022 conviction for securities and wire fraud at Nikola Corporation.
Q8. What speed record did SyberJet claim in 2026?
SyberJet’s SJ30-2 flew from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Diego at an average of 505.3 mph — claiming a 48.9% improvement over the prior C-1f weight class record, pending official certification.
SyberJet Aircraft is a privately owned American jet manufacturer, currently controlled by an investment group led by CEO Trevor Milton — the pardoned founder of Nikola Corporation. The company traces its origins to 1959, when aviation legend Ed Swearingen founded Swearingen Aircraft in San Antonio, Texas. Over the following six decades, it passed through five different ownership structures — including Taiwanese investors, Dubai billionaires, and a Utah manufacturing company — before Milton’s group acquired it between 2024 and 2026.
Today, SyberJet is chasing a $4 billion valuation, a $1 billion fundraise, an FAA-certified AI-powered jet by 2032, and a speed record that — if certified — would put the SJ30-2 in the aviation history books. Whether Trevor Milton can turn SyberJet’s decades of near-misses into a genuine success story is the most fascinating open question in American business aviation right now.
