Aurora Flight Sciences seems to have the broadest mandate of all — the Boeing-owned company will “perform a comprehensive, ‘open-aperture’ exploration of technologies and aircraft concepts.” One hopes they were a bit more specific in their application!

Interestingly, none of the electric propulsion and flight startups we’ve seen collecting large sums of investor money are present here. Perhaps the juice was not worth the squeeze when they have VC money on tap — or else their visions for the future of aviation differ are too different. (They do mostly make personal helicopters, after all.)