Archer To Acquire Wisk, Insitu, and SkyGrid from Boeing

Archer Aviation will acquire autonomous eVTOL aircraft developer Wisk Aero, along with airspace management software company SkyGrid and defense drone manufacturer Insitu, from Boeing in an all-stock transaction that hands Boeing just under one-fifth of Archer and a seat on its board, the companies announced today. The deal delivers Archer the autonomy program of the rival that sued it for trade secret theft five years ago.

Under an equity purchase agreement signed on Sunday, Boeing receives a block of stock equal to 19.75% of Archer’s Class A shares outstanding immediately before the deal closes, according to the Form 8-K that the San Jose, California-based company filed on Monday. The deal, expected to close by year-end, has an estimated value of about $1 billion.

Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein called the transaction “a watershed moment” for the company and a step toward “becoming a diversified platform.” Boeing v-p of commercial airplanes product development Brian Yutko, who ran Wisk before taking his current job, described it as “a win-win,” saying it lets Boeing recover value from two decades of investment while it concentrates on its core businesses.

Insitu supplies the revenue Archer has so far lacked. The maker of the ScanEagle family of uncrewed aircraft brings in more than $200 million a year and works in 35 countries, according to Boeing. Archer reported $1.6 million in revenue for the first quarter of this year.

Archer’s Defense Business Grows

The acquisition also bolsters Archer’s recent push into defense. Archer unveiled Thunder, a hybrid-electric autonomous aircraft developed with Anduril, on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow last month, pitching it for military missions such as low-level attack. Days later, Japanese leasing group Marubeni backed Halo, the commercial variant of the same uncrewed aircraft. Much of Archer’s defense line was purchased: Archer took intellectual property and composites capability from Overair in August 2025 and Lilium’s eVTOL patent portfolio that October. Neither Thunder nor Halo has flown.

Insitu has fielded more than 3,500 uncrewed aircraft and sells to the armed forces of 35 nations, so Archer is gaining customers, production lines, and revenue rather than another program in development. In the announcement, the companies said the autonomy and airspace software from all three businesses will feed “Zee,” the artificial intelligence model Archer built for aerospace and defense, producing what they call an end-to-end physical AI platform. Wisk brings a flight-control computer, sensor suite, and radar system designed for civil and defense certification, according to the same statement.

Each business reached Boeing by a different route. Boeing bought Bingen, Washington-based Insitu outright in 2008. Wisk began in 2019 as a joint venture with Kitty Hawk and became wholly owned in May 2023. Boeing formed SkyGrid in 2018 as a joint venture with Austin, Texas-based SparkCognition to develop an airspace management system built on artificial intelligence and blockchain; it later added hyper-local weather data from ClimaCell and released a mission-planning app for drone operators. Boeing folded SkyGrid into its Wisk business in mid-2025.

Five companies are party to the purchase agreement alongside Boeing and Archer: Wisk Aero, Insitu, Insitu Pacific, Wisk Australia, and Boeing Emirates, an Abu Dhabi Global Market company the agreement calls Insitu Emirates. SkyGrid is not among them, because it transfers inside Wisk. The Abu Dhabi entity carries its own significance; Archer has spent two years building toward launch operations in the United Arab Emirates, and Insitu already handles drone sales and support in the region.

Why Boeing Is Selling

Boeing has been shedding businesses outside commercial jets since Kelly Ortberg became CEO. Last year it sold Digital Aviation Solutions—Jeppesen, ForeFlight, AerData, and OzRunways—to private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $10.5 billion. Some within the industry believe that, rather than having much interest in Wisk’s envisioned business case for a self-flying air taxi, Boeing considered the subsidiary purely a technology incubator informing autonomous flight systems on Boeing’s future airliners.

Yutko has pushed back on that reading. At the Farnborough International Airshow, he rejected the idea that Wisk was only ever a technology incubator for Boeing. In a passing conversation with AIN sister site Leeham News and Analysis, he maintained that any company working to advance technology must make an earnest effort to reach the market. Otherwise, he said, breakthroughs with real-world applications are unlikely.

Looking more broadly across the aerospace sector, Boeing’s sale of Wisk further reduces the number of established airframers directly involved in air taxi development, after Wichita’s Textron quietly wound down its Nexus eVTOL development program as it shuttered its eAviation business unit, and Airbus Helicopters paused work on the CityAirbus NextGen project. Now, Embraer-backed Eve, developing the four-passenger Eve 100, stands as an exception.

Boeing will not walk away from autonomous flight. It keeps access to Wisk’s core autonomy technology for its current and future commercial and defense aircraft, and at closing each company will grant the other worldwide rights to use some of its technology. Neither that license nor the transition services agreement appears among the exhibits filed with the 8-K, so their scope stays private. Jefferies analysts wrote on August 10 that the arrangement amounts to a cross-license preserving Boeing’s access to Wisk’s core autonomous flight technology.

eVTOL Rivals

Wisk sued Archer in April 2021 in the U.S. federal court for the Northern District of California, alleging that a departing engineer carried thousands of proprietary files to the start-up and that Archer’s two-seat Maker demonstrator copied the patented design of Wisk’s then-unrevealed sixth-generation aircraft. Archer countered that Wisk filed the patent application only after learning of Archer’s tiltrotor design at a recruitment meeting.

Federal prosecutors declined to charge the engineer in February 2023. Six months later, days before trial, the companies settled: Archer delivered just over 13 million shares nominally valued at $73 million, named Wisk its exclusive provider of autonomous flight technology, and took an undisclosed Boeing investment as part of a $215 million funding round.

Both companies have roles in the U.S. eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, the precertification operating framework an executive order established in June 2025. The Department of Transportation and the FAA selected eight projects in March; Wisk leads one, and Archer is a partner on three, led by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the transportation departments of Texas and Florida. It is unclear what will become of Wisk’s eIPP project.

Their aircraft differ, and so do their timelines. Archer is pursuing FAA type certification for the pilot-plus-four-passenger Midnight in 2026 or 2027, while Wisk has been pursuing a pilotless, four-passenger aircraft expected to enter service by 2030. Wisk has been flight-testing a pair of Gen 6 prototypes this year.

With the acquisition of Wisk, Archer also inherits pending litigation. A former Wisk software engineering manager sued Wisk and Boeing in Santa Clara County Superior Court on June 29, alleging that Wisk fired her after she reported that its vehicle management system software failed verification steps required under DO-178C, the FAA-recognized standard for aviation software. A case management conference is set for December 2. A Wisk spokeswoman declined to comment on the allegations, citing the pending case.

Language in the purchase agreement suggests the two sides negotiated over technical risk in the Gen 6 program. The agreement frees Archer from completing the purchase if something goes badly wrong at the three businesses before the sale closes. One category of trouble does not count: a crash, failure, or defect involving Wisk’s Gen 6 aircraft. Archer cannot treat a Gen 6 accident or a defect finding as grounds to abandon the deal.

Both companies expect to close by the end of 2026. First, U.S. antitrust regulators and national security reviewers must sign off, and the New York Stock Exchange must approve listing the shares going to Boeing. Either side can walk away if the sale has not closed by May 9, 2027.

Second-quarter Report

Archer reported second-quarter results on August 10, after the market closed. During the second quarter, Archer revenues reached $5 million, and its net loss was $262.3 million or $0.34 per share. The loss climbed from $206 million in the first quarter, primarily due to an increase in research and development costs of $63.6 million. General and administrative costs climbed by $40.2 million from the first to second quarter.

Archer officials did not provide an update on the timeline for FAA certification of the Midnight eVTOL aircraft, although Goldstein did say, “We remain incredibly focused on this goal, as air taxi will always be core to our mission. And Midnight is well on its way.”

During the second quarter, the Midnight prototype flew “multiple times a day” with a pilot at the controls in both VTOL and CTOL modes. This included a flight between California’s Salinas and Monterey airports. “Over the next few months, you can expect us to begin flying in the LA area, based out of the Hawthorne Airport, and subsequently commence operations under the White House's eIPP later this year in Texas.” Last December, Archer purchased the leasehold then later the FBO at Hawthorne Airport.

As for certification, the Midnight is in its fourth and final phase of the type certification process, according to Goldstein, “with a fully accepted means of compliance. Notably, this quarter the FAA approved our quality management system, which hardens our ability to perform FAA for-credit conformity findings across the aircraft, as well as its components and systems. We're actively working with the FAA on for-credit testing this year.”

Interim CFO Priya Gupta summed up the second-quarter earnings report. “First, we continue to maintain a very healthy balance sheet with $1.6 billion in liquidity at the end of Q2. Second, we grew revenue to $5 million for Q2, which is a 213% increase over last quarter. This was driven by our growth in operations at the Hawthorne Airport in LA. Third, we met our spend guidance. Q2 adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $177 million, which is on the lower end of our guidance range of $170 to $200 million, and only a slight increase quarter over quarter. These results are an early indication of our ability to grow the business while staying measured in our use of cash, which is exactly what we must do in this next phase for Archer. For Q3, we estimate our adjusted EBITDA loss to stay within the same range of $170 to $200 million, as we continue to mature the Midnight flight test program, including our operations under the eIPP, continue development of Halo, and advance our AI solutions. 

“Looking ahead, in addition to these key priorities, our focus will be on closing the transaction with Boeing as soon as possible, with a target of end of year, and then integrating the business efficiently and effectively. It all comes back to the old adage: execution matters, and we are committed to delivering against the framework I laid out, maturing a diversified product base to fuel a growing top line, all while controlling spend.”