Electric aircraft startup Lilium is shutting down after failing to raise emergency money from the German government, a regulatory filing showed.

The filing comes after a series of setbacks from the German company that was once a darling in the nascent industry of electric aircraft. Lilium, which developed VTOL aircraft at speeds up to 100 km/h, had raised more than $1 billion from investors before going public in 2021 on the Nasdaq Exchange via a reverse merger with a blank-check company, SPAC Qell.

So far, however, Lilium had successfully lured enough big-name investors-Tencent among them-and signed up enough customers to place an order for 100 electric jets in Saudi Arabia. Even more recently, it was so far along as to power up its first fully scale prototype. Yet the company had still yet to come near to being near to delivering its product.

Meanwhile, it burned a hole in its pocket and encountered other challenges. In 2020, one of Lilium's two test models caught fire during maintenance. Although the model was close to the end of its testing period, this would mean grounding its second, newer model until it could figure out what happened to the first aircraft.

It was looking to secure additional funding, including €50 million ($54 million) in loans from the German government. The legislature denied it last week. Lilium said that "it has received indication that the budget committee of the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany will not approve a €50 million guarantee of a contemplated €100 million convertible loan.".

The company said it could not raise enough additional funds to continue the operation of its subsidiaries.

Lilium said it would be filing for insolvency in the coming days under German law. This would mean Lilium losing control over its subsidiaries, including eAircraft, Lilium.