The Boeing aerospace company is not having a great year. A string of high profile parts failures have generated endless bad press. It is facing criminal charges after two of its 737 Max airplanes crashed. And whistleblowers have even accused Boeing of ignoring best production practices to save a buck.

Boeing’s management is notoriously obsessed with its stock prices. So as this ill will led to plummeting share values, Boeing may have looked elsewhere to reassure its shareholders: stealing tech from a startup it was investing in.

In 2013, buzzy aerospace startup Zunum exploded onto the scene with a seemingly revolutionary design. It revealed its prototype for a nine passenger hybrid jet with easily swappable battery cells in its wings. Zunum claimed a 700 mile range and better fuel efficiency than most other business jets.

Investors were intrigued. One of those investors was Horizon X, Boeing’s venture capital division.

Fast forward to 2019, and Zunum hadn’t secured enough funding to go into production. Investors turned tail and the company folded. Boeing was dismissive of the attempt to make a hybrid plane, saying, ““An ambitious startup’s reach exceeded its grasp, and investors fled…What preliminarily looked like an interesting investment prospect that promised a new hybrid electric or electric aircraft turned into a loss.”

Then something interesting happened. Zunum’s founders discovered that Boeing had built a hybrid business jet prototype. And the finished product looked suspiciously like Zunum’s designs. Even Boeing was forced to admit the similarity was no coincidence. It is claiming that the plane was a “conceptual mock-up.” It called the prototype “a tool that Boeing used to evaluate the feasibility of the type of aircraft taht Zunum hoped to build.”

Zunum is claiming something much more nefarious happened. It added that it was originally “forced to halt its development program due to Boeing-caused capital starvation.”

The long and short of it is that a federal jury has ruled in favor of Zunum. The jury awarded Zunum $72 million in damages for stolen trade secrets, and more for Boeing’s interference with Zunum’s business. The total tab came to $81.2 million. But interestingly, the judge is allowed to triple that amount during sentencing. I’d say $243.6 million would be a big enough chunk to get Zunum going again.

Next, see the news coverage of the Boeing vs Zunum trial in the video below: