Supersonic airliner in doubt as company shifts to powering AI data centers

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Rough air

Boom’s airliner may be delayed, and its data center power business lost a customer.

Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl speaks during the unveiling of a factory dedicated to manufacturing natural gas turbines for AI data centers. Credit: Boom Supersonic

Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl speaks during the unveiling of a factory dedicated to manufacturing natural gas turbines for AI data centers. Credit: Boom Supersonic

Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl recently declared “it’s time for a renaissance in energy and in supersonic flight” as the supersonic airliner company unveiled a Colorado factory dedicated to making gas turbines for AI data centers. But Boom may be facing turbulence after early backers for both ventures have questioned the company’s delivery timeline or backed out entirely.

One of the company’s first customers, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, has expressed doubts about Boom’s original plan to deliver the first Overture supersonic airliner in 2029. Kirby’s latest frank assessment came during an interview with the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast that appeared on October 28, 2026.

“‘29 is their official timeline,” Kirby told podcast host Monica Langley. “It’s not going to happen in ‘29—it’s going to take longer.”

Boom first made headlines for flying its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft in 2024 and 2025 to demonstrate a “boomless cruise” concept that harnesses the Mach cutoff phenomenon. Such a feat involves flying just beyond supersonic speeds at higher altitudes under specific atmospheric conditions, so that the aircraft’s shockwaves refract upward and minimize the impact on the ground.

The company’s plan to revive supersonic air travel has been backed by the Trump administration via efforts to ease regulations. In June 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a new rule overturning a long-standing ban on commercial supersonic flights over the United States, following an executive order from President Donald Trump.

Boom’s press releases have previously described achieving aircraft certification and carrying the first paying customers by 2029. The company has conditional agreements with American Airlines, Japan Airlines, and United Airlines involving non-refundable deposits of unknown amounts that would allow the airlines to fully purchase the Overture aircraft once it becomes commercially available.

But United CEO Kirby pointed out that Boom still has “a lot of hurdles to overcome” while developing Overture and getting the supersonic airliner certified by the FAA. “So it’s not a guarantee that they’ll overcome,” he cautioned during the podcast interview, even though he praised Scholl and the company in general.

This follows Kirby’s earlier comments back in March that put the chances of Boom’s Overture airliner entering commercial service at “50-50.” Ars has reached out to Boom for comment.

Although Boom completed building the factory intended for production of the Overture airliner in 2024, the facility located at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, has mostly sat dormant since that time. That has raised questions for North Carolina state leaders who provided more than $50 million in taxpayer funding to help build the Overture factory.

Since October 2025, NASA has separately been doing test flights involving the experimental X-59 with a long, needle-like nose designed to reduce the sonic booms from supersonic flight. But this is a completely different approach than Boom’s use of the Mach cutoff flights.

Boom Supersonic’s prototype turbine core called Sprint Core is intended to power both gas turbines for AI data centers and the engine for Boom’s supersonic airliner.

Boom tries to ride the AI boom

Much of Boom’s recent focus has been on developing natural gas turbines to power AI data centers as an additional revenue stream. On October 22, the company unveiled another factory in Centennial, Colorado, dedicated to producing a 42-megawatt natural gas turbine called Superpower for data centers.

The Trump administration’s public support of Boom was once again evident as US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright participated in the event alongside Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

Boom described its new Superpower factory as making turbine parts while still undergoing construction. It aims to deliver the first gas turbines to AI data center customers in mid-2027 while ramping up annual production to 25 turbines in 2028 and 50 turbines by 2029.

Boom’s detour into powering data centers coincides with many tech companies prioritizing natural gas as the primary power source to get their projects up and running. Some data center developers are even using “mobile gas generators strapped to semitrucks” or “aeroderivative turbines originally designed for aircraft and warships,” according to the market intelligence platform Cleanview.

However, Boom CEO Scholl also acknowledged the recent loss of a $1.25 billion deal that would have seen data center developer Crusoe purchase 29 of Boom’s gas turbines, in a post on the social media platform X on September 25. Crusoe has been involved in building Texas data centers for Oracle, Google and Microsoft that draw upon various power sources including natural gas and renewables.

Scholl said Boom “will be delivering about 250MW of Superpowers next year to other sites” but did not specify the AI data center customers that may be using the gas turbines.

Still, Boom has characterized the development of a gas turbine for data centers as being synergistic with its design of the Symphony engine for the Overture airliner. During the October announcement, it also described having completed a prototype turbine core, called Sprint Core, that is intended to eventually power both the Superpower gas turbine and Symphony engine for the airliner.

That turbine core is set to undergo testing at the Colorado Air & Space Port, with Boom planning to fire the turbine for the first time before Thanksgiving. That would be a concrete development milestone, but the company still has much to do in proving it can get both its AI data center and supersonic airliner ventures off the ground.

Jeremy Hsu is a reporter exploring a wide range of topics across deep tech and AI. He has previously written for New Scientist, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Wired, Undark Magazine and MIT Tech Review, among many other publications, about topics such as deepfakes, data centers, drones, battery tech, robotics, and GPS jamming. He also has a Master of Arts in Journalism from NYU, and a bachelor's degree from University of Pennsylvania in History and Sociology of Science, with a minor in English.

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