Archer Aviation Takes Control of Boeing’s Flying Taxi Work and Gains a Ready-Made Defense Business

Three years to the day after settling a bruising legal fight over trade secrets, Archer Aviation is buying the company that once sued it. On Monday, Archer and Boeing announced definitive agreements under which Archer will acquire Wisk Aero along with two other Boeing subsidiaries, SkyGrid and Insitu. In return, Boeing will receive a substantial equity stake in Archer, warrants for more shares later, a board seat, and continued access to key autonomy technology.

Archer, a California-based air taxi startup still struggling to thrive in commercial air taxi journeys, has accepted to the complete package of Boeing’s advanced autonomy and unmanned aircraft ventures. Wisk has spent several years building fully autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. He has successfully designed, constructed, and flown six successive versions of these machines, conducting more than 1700 flight tests. In December 2025, their most recent full-scale prototype, Generation 6, was able to take to the air. In order to keep autonomous aircraft safely in sync with both traditional crewed aircraft and each other, SkyGrid is developing digital air traffic management software. Building and maintaining military drones, which are used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, is the main focus of Insitu’s business. These drones have flown over 3500 aircraft, operate in 35 countries, and generate over $200 million in revenue annually.

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Boeing will receive newly issued Archer Class A shares equal to 19.75 percent of the shares outstanding immediately before the deal closes. That translates to roughly a 16.5 percent ownership stake once the new shares are issued, as well as two warrants that will provide them an additional $100 million when they come to utilize them (at $13 & $17.88 per share). The arrangement of this purchase is rather simple and all-stock. Boeing has the authority to designate one of their own directors to serve on the board of Archer as long as they maintain their ownership of the company. Finally, a tech-sharing agreement between the two businesses allows Boeing to continue utilizing Wisk’s fundamental autonomous flight capabilities in their own commercial and defense initiatives.

It is all set to close by the end of 2026, if they receive regulatory approval, which will include an antitrust investigation. May 2027 is one of the dates they will need to work toward. For Archer, the impact of getting their hands on Insitu comes very soon. They’ve been struggling to make any kind of revenue from their air taxi work so far, so this brings them a lot more cashflow from the defense business, as well as customers and operational scale, all while the passenger carrying electric aircraft work takes a little longer to get certified and off the ground. The technology they receive from Wisk and SkyGrid will be directly integrated into Archer’s own plans, as they have been working on something called the ZEE AI foundation model for some of the most complex aero and defense applications. They hope to kick things off in the self-flying air taxis and autonomous systems space by combining the flight time of acquired teams (almost two million hours) with the work they already have going on.
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