TechCrunch Mobility: The shifting flight path of electric air taxis

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Something was in the air this week because we had a heck of a lot of electric aircraft news.

But really, it’s no joke — two of the bigger deals of the week involved companies developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL). Together they illustrate how the burgeoning sector continues to consolidate and seek out near-term revenue streams even as they go through the lengthy regulatory process to eventually deploy electric air taxis. In one of the crazier twists in the nascent eVTOL industry, Archer Aviation announced that it now owns its former rival Wisk Aero.

Under the terms of the deal, Boeing agreed to sell Wisk Aero and two other subsidiaries to Archer in exchange for an ownership stake in the company. Boeing now holds a 16.5% stake in Archer. The other subsidiaries are SkyGrid, a digital airspace and air traffic management software company, and drone maker Insitu.

For those unfamiliar, Wisk sued Archer in 2021 over allegations of the “brazen theft” of confidential information and intellectual property. The case went on for two years before the companies reached an unusual settlement that not only ended the lawsuit and Archer’s countersuit against Wisk seeking $1 billion in damages, but also led to a new collaboration. Wisk has taken a rather winding path.

It started as Kitty Hawk, an electric aviation startup led by Sebastian Thrun, who co-founded the Alphabet moonshot factory X, and backed by Google co-founder Larry Page. Kitty Hawk shut down in September 2022, but its Cora program, which had spun off into a joint venture with Boeing, lived on. That joint venture was renamed Wisk Aero.

Then there’s Joby Aviation, which made a more predictable deal this week. The company acquired Resonant Sciences for $500 million, marking the electric air taxi developer’s push into the defense sector. Resonant Sciences, which makes radio frequency and sensor systems, will become a dedicated defense business under Joby aptly called Joby Defense.