His charisma and technical expertise bolstered the company’s startup phase fundraising in Silicon Valley. Eremenko is still listed as CEO on the company website, but via email he said he left at the end of April.

He said private equity firms eventually cooled to the concept due to higher interest rates and constant fears of an impending recession.

An additional headwind was the nearing U.S. election. “If (Donald) Trump were to win, investors saw a significant risk that the massive green hydrogen subsidy enacted as part of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act would disappear,” Eremenko wrote.

Documents viewed by The Seattle Times show that negotiations for $20 million in funding from a Saudi investment fund fell through.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the company, Eremenko said management attempted to merge with a regional airline that would retrofit its planes with hydrogen power.

The documents show that airline was Florida-based Silver Airways. Silver has been losing money for the past year and funding its ongoing operations with debt, the documents state.

“I am sad to hear that the merger did not come to fruition and Universal Hydrogen is now liquidating,” Eremenko said.

The letter to shareholders is signed by Cousin, Universal’s former chief technology officer, in the CEO role. He was not immediately reachable Saturday.

The barriers to Universal’s success were always immense.

The Los Angeles-based company had to both engineer a hydrogen-powered propulsion system and create from scratch a new logistics infrastructure that could deliver the hydrogen fuel at airports.

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