Private Jets Are Scarce. Blame the Gusher of AI Wealth
Silicon Valley’s enormous surge in riches has turbocharged the market for new and used planes, energizing startups that offer innovative ways to gain access to an aircraft.
After Bill Papariella, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.–based entrepreneur, sold his private jet charter business for nearly $1 billion in 2022, he took it easy for a couple years. But as the number of ultrawealthy continued to climb in the U.S., another business idea struck him: a company that offered fractional jet ownership, like NetJets, but with a service designed as an even more premium product.
Last October, he launched Bond, planning a private plane fleet with interiors lined in Loro Piana textiles, custom crystal from French brand Saint-Louis and cabin attendants on every flight. To give Bond a heightened sense of exclusivity, Papariella capped the company’s initial membership at around 100 people, who pay between $1.1 million and $3.5 million a year depending on the aircraft. Its members have an average net worth of $500 million, and about 30% of them hail from Silicon Valley—founders, researchers and engineers at companies like xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI, many of them under the age of 34, Papariella said. (He wouldn’t comment publicly on anyone’s identity.) Flights on a fleet of 20 airplanes will begin in 2027.
“The amount of influx we’ve had from the youth has been something I did not see coming,” said Papariella, speaking from a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea recently. “That’s only happened over the last two months.”
Members of Silicon Valley’s old guard, like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Alex Karp, have been drawing headlines for prolific private plane travel for years. But now the AI boom’s giant paychecks and swelling equity packages have propelled a new generation of techies into the realm of personal planes. That has thrown the aviation industry into overdrive, with the prospect of more giant IPOs already fueling further demand, experts said.
A couple years ago, someone who wanted to buy a new Bombardier or a Gulfstream jet could get one in 18 months or less. These days, they can expect to wait two to three years. Prices for used models are rising steeply as well, just as used automobile prices soared during the pandemic.
“At the high end, we see a 15% price increase—approaching 20%—which could be $6 [million] to 8 million on a $40 million asset,” said Greg Sydor, a sales director at Guardian Jet, one of the world’s biggest brokers of private planes. “It’s a lot.”
The frenzied private plane market provides a window into this moment of economic fortune and froth. The popularity of private jets, which can cost up to $80 million or more, means they are an increasingly important consideration for financial advisers and portfolio managers, experts said. The wealthy are also using them as a tool for tax avoidance—thanks in no small part to President Donald Trump, who signed tax bills in both of his terms that included a significant write-off for private plane owners.
“This moment has, I believe, never existed in history,” said Izzy Slodowitz, founder of Craft, another startup offering fractional jet ownership. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. People are not starting at the bottom like they used to. They’re making a different type of money.”
San Francisco saw the fastest growth of any of the top 10 U.S. cities for private jet traffic in the first six months of 2026, with the number of flights increasing 10.7% over the same period in 2025, according to WingX, which compiles data on the industry. Overall, flights are up about 5% in these cities, which count for the majority of private flight traffic in the U.S.
Given the skyrocketing demand, hangar space for private aircraft has grown tight in the Bay Area, New York and beyond, with monthly storage costs for larger planes increasing to as much as $60,000 a month, up double-digit percentage points over the last couple of years, said venture capitalist Adam Grosser, chair of San Carlos, Calif.–based UP.Partners, who owns two airplanes and has been a pilot for more than 30 years.
“There’s literally no space on the airfield,” Grosser said. “And that is a nationwide phenomenon.”
Grosser estimates that his Gulfstream G550, a long-range business jet that is particularly popular, has appreciated more than 20% since he bought it two years ago. Recently, he acquired a smaller plane, a 2008 Cessna Citation Encore+, on the secondary market for about $3.5 million. It uses less fuel and is better suited for shorter trips.
The wealthy tend to first get interested in private plane travel when they charter jets, said Preston Holland, founder of Prestige Aircraft Finance, a financial advisory for jet buyers, and host of “The VIP Seat,” a podcast about private planes. The people who charter jets—which cost several thousand dollars per hour, depending on plane size—tend to have at least $20 million in net worth and $2 million in annual income, he said.
When they reach $100 million to $200 million in net worth and $20 million in income, people often start thinking about buying their own plane, Holland said. And where tech wealth made up about 20% of the demand for private plane travel a decade ago, Holland estimates it’s about 40% now.
The wheels of this demand have been greased by a culture that is increasingly less shy about wealth, especially in Silicon Valley, where maximizing productivity and speed has never been more important. In this crowd, the ability to fly to a meeting or visit an asset like a data center located far away from major airports and make it home by dinner has an obvious appeal, private aviation experts said.
“Tech eligible buyers in the past coming out of California were probably a little less inclined to buy an airplane because of the politics,” Sydor said. “That’s changing a little bit. New tech money is feeling more empowered to buy aircraft, especially as they view it more as a utilitarian thing as opposed to a luxury.”
Craft, the startup founded by Slodowitz, is well tailored for this moment of mega-IPOs. The company’s core business is chartering planes for people to fly around the world. Recently, it also began offering discounted access to its planes through what is called an exchange fund.
The financial product allows people who own a large chunk of publicly traded stock to transfer that equity into the fund and in exchange receive shares of the fund, without needing to pay any taxes. Investors in the fund share ownership of the stocks and ownership in Craft’s charter jet business, which allows them to get a cut of Craft’s revenue or use its planes at a discount. The minimum investment is $1.5 million.
Investors in the exchange fund include Kleiner Perkins’ Ilya Fushman and Spark Capital founder Santo Politi. Ten people connected to Nvidia—mostly current and former employees—have already purchased shares of the fund, Slodowitz said, and talks are ongoing with employees from OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX. (People cannot participate in the exchange fund until their shares are publicly traded and no longer subject to lockup periods.)
Slodowitz, a former professional pilot, fell into the world of the Silicon Valley elite after taking Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra to Burning Man one year and camping with Sciarra’s friends. Slodowitz started Craft in 2020 as a traditional charter jet operator but soon realized that the tech industry’s hefty equity packages raised an interesting set of issues for beneficiaries—namely, having to pay a sizable tax bill upon sale, and running the risks associated with highly concentrated portfolios.
“I realized that none of these people have an aviation problem. They have a stock problem,” Slodowitz said. “And if I can solve that problem for them, then I can build a great aviation business.”
Slodowitz said he ultimately views the exchange fund as a tool for tax-free wealth transfer between generations.
“The goal is to just pass [the shares] on to your heirs in a diversified portfolio,” he said.
Private planes come with other tax benefits these days. Federal tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first presidency and then reinstated permanently in the Big Beautiful Bill last year give private jet buyers the ability to write off 100% of a jet’s cost the year it is purchased, as long as they fulfill some conditions, like using the plane for business more than half the time. That gives many wealthy people a strong incentive to make a purchase.
“We have a number of owners who will own more than one airplane because of the tax benefits,” said Jamie Walker, executive chair of Jet Linx, a company that offers a membership program for accessing private jets. “They’ll buy an airplane and take advantage of the tax benefit. They’ll then have that benefit need again in a future year, and then they’ll buy another airplane.”
Jet Linx has seen its membership increase 60% year over year and plans to expand its operations later this year from places like Nashville, Tenn., Miami and New York to the Bay Area, where it sees a growing market. The part of its business that involves managing planes—hiring their crews, conducting maintenance and other tasks—and helps private owners rent them out has seen a 65% increase over the same period.
Business is booming for Connecticut-based Guardian Jet. It is on pace to see its sales increase 80% this year, driven by demand from both individuals and large companies buying jets for executives, said Sydor.
Last month, the company gathered a group of about 30 family office heads, lenders and financial managers for the first time at the New York Yacht Club in Midtown Manhattan. Over cocktails and canapes, attendees were educated about how to manage a jet like a portfolio asset—when to buy, sell and hold—as well as on the tax benefits of ownership, Sydor said.
Guardian’s trading floor, a blur of computers, monitors and ticker screens where it helps clients buy and sell jets on the secondary market, has seen a surge of energy over the last year, growing in size by some 30%. Most of the planes are bought and sold off-market, and they go quickly, often within a day or two, Sydor said.
“It’s kind of akin to seeking out a rare painting or a specific vintage of wine or watch,” said Sydor. “You need to hunt for these things.”