Archer Aviation to Acquire Boeing’s Wisk, Insitu and SkyGrid as Boeing Takes Nearly 20% Stake

Archer Aviation is set to become a much broader aerospace company under a deal with Boeing that would bring autonomous air taxis, military drones and airspace-management technology under the same roof.

Archer said Monday it plans to acquire Boeing-owned Wisk Aero, uncrewed-aircraft maker Insitu and airspace technology company SkyGrid. In return, Boeing will receive Archer shares equal to 19.75% of Archer’s pre-closing Class A share count and the right to appoint a director to Archer’s board. Boeing and Archer will also enter a technology-sharing arrangement that preserves Boeing’s access to Wisk’s autonomous-flight technology for use in future commercial and defense aircraft.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026. Archer shares rose sharply after the announcement, gaining more than 7% in Monday afternoon trading after climbing as much as roughly 14% earlier in the session.

The significance of the deal extends well beyond adding another electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft program. Archer has spent much of its history centered on Midnight, its piloted electric air taxi. Wisk, Insitu and SkyGrid would give it businesses spanning autonomous passenger aircraft, military intelligence and surveillance drones, and the digital infrastructure needed to manage increasingly autonomous aircraft in shared airspace.

That also makes the transaction different from a conventional consolidation between two competing air-taxi developers. Insitu already has an established defense business and generates more than $200 million in annual revenue while operating profitably, according to Reuters. Archer, by comparison, reported just $1.6 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026.

Insitu gives Archer something it has lacked: an established revenue business

Insitu may be the least familiar name in the transaction to investors following the eVTOL industry, but financially it could be one of the most important assets Archer is acquiring.

The Washington-based Boeing subsidiary develops and operates uncrewed aircraft systems primarily for defense and government customers. Its aircraft have accumulated more than 1.5 million operational flight hours across land and sea and have been used by customers in more than 35 countries.

Its best-known aircraft include ScanEagle and Integrator. ScanEagle is a long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform with more than 1.6 million combat flight hours, according to Insitu. Integrator can remain airborne for as long as 27.5 hours, carry as much as 50 pounds of payload and operate with a range of electro-optical, radar and AI-assisted sensors.

That is not merely legacy defense technology. In May, Insitu was selected to compete for U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and other U.S. government intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work using ScanEagle and Integrator. In June, the company said an Integrator VTOL aircraft completed a 22.4-hour sortie during the Balikatan 2026 military exercise while operating in demanding heat and high-altitude conditions.

For Archer, the acquisition therefore introduces an operating business with paying defense customers at the same time that the company is trying to build a much larger presence in autonomous military aviation.

That push has accelerated rapidly this summer. In July, Archer and defense technology company Anduril unveiled an autonomous hybrid-electric VTOL platform intended for both military and commercial use. Anduril’s defense version, called Thunder, is designed as a large autonomous attack rotorcraft, while Archer subsequently introduced Halo as the commercial version of the platform.

Insitu gives Archer a different foothold in that market: an established fleet, operational experience, government relationships and existing revenue rather than another aircraft program that is still moving toward commercialization. Archer CEO Adam Goldstein told Reuters that acquiring Insitu would allow the company to begin generating significant revenue in a market where demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones is high.

The contrast with Archer’s current financial profile is considerable. Archer ended the first quarter with about $1.78 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, but recorded a $217.7 million net loss and used $149.1 million of cash in operating activities during the quarter. The company has substantial liquidity to fund development, but its existing revenue remains small relative to its spending.

Bringing a profitable defense operation into the group would not eliminate the large investment required to certify and manufacture Archer’s aircraft, but it could diversify a business whose financial results have so far been dominated by development expenses.

Wisk adds a second, distinctly different path to passenger air mobility

Wisk brings a different kind of value. While Archer’s Midnight aircraft is designed around a pilot carrying up to four passengers, Wisk has spent years developing an all-electric aircraft intended to fly without a pilot on board. Its Generation 6 aircraft is designed as an autonomous, four-passenger eVTOL with human oversight provided from the ground.

Wisk’s program has already entered an active flight-test phase. Its first Generation 6 aircraft began flight testing in December 2025, and a second aircraft completed its first flight in May, allowing Wisk to collect data from multiple test vehicles as it works through aircraft performance, control laws and system validation.

The company is also pursuing FAA type certification and has been selected with the Texas Department of Transportation for the federal government’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. Wisk plans to use its autonomous systems and Generation 6 aircraft in real-world operations under that program.

Its work extends beyond simply making the aircraft fly itself. In July, Wisk said a simulation conducted with NASA demonstrated a setup in which one ground-based supervisor could oversee three autonomous aircraft simultaneously while those aircraft operated alongside conventional traffic using existing air-traffic-control procedures. The work is relevant to one of the central economic questions surrounding autonomous air taxis: whether removing a pilot can eventually allow operators to manage fleets efficiently without replacing each onboard pilot with one dedicated person on the ground.

Archer would therefore be acquiring an autonomous aviation program that is technologically and operationally different from Midnight rather than simply buying another version of its own aircraft.

The two companies are also not strangers. In 2021, Wisk sued Archer in a dispute involving alleged theft of trade secrets and aircraft technology. Archer denied the allegations and brought its own counterclaims. The dispute ended in August 2023 when Archer, Wisk and Boeing settled the litigation on undisclosed terms and agreed to collaborate on autonomous flight. As part of that arrangement, Archer agreed to use Wisk as the exclusive provider of autonomy technology for future variants of its aircraft, while Boeing invested in Archer.

Three years later, that collaboration is turning into ownership.

Wisk became a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary in 2023 after years of investment and technical cooperation with the aerospace manufacturer. Under the new transaction, control would move to Archer, but Boeing would retain access to Wisk’s autonomous-flight technology while becoming a major Archer shareholder and gaining representation on its board.

That structure gives Boeing exposure to Archer’s success without requiring it to continue owning and funding the three businesses directly.

SkyGrid fills the airspace-management gap

SkyGrid is smaller and less visible than Wisk or Insitu, but it connects another part of Archer’s emerging strategy.

The Austin-based company develops digital services intended to help autonomous and advanced aircraft operate safely within shared airspace. It became a Wisk subsidiary in 2025 as the two companies combined work on autonomous aircraft with the systems needed to integrate those aircraft into existing aviation infrastructure.

SkyGrid’s work includes automated flight rules, digital airspace services and tools designed to coordinate increasingly autonomous aircraft with conventional aviation. In February, it was selected for an FAA-sponsored project studying cooperative separation capabilities for advanced air mobility operations, with work scheduled to continue through February 2027.

Wisk and SkyGrid have also been developing a framework for Automated Flight Rules, an envisioned set of procedures intended to support higher-density autonomous operations than today’s largely human-coordinated airspace system was designed to handle.

Those capabilities fit closely with Archer’s recent move into aviation artificial intelligence.

In July, Archer introduced Zee, an aviation-focused AI foundation model trained using information that includes air-traffic-control communications, aircraft state data, weather, maps and ADS-B flight information. Archer says the system is intended for applications ranging from aircraft and airline operations to airspace management.

Adding Wisk’s autonomous-aircraft technology and SkyGrid’s airspace-management work could give Archer a much larger pool of aircraft, operational and airspace data around which to develop that software strategy. Insitu adds another set of real-world autonomous operations, particularly in defense environments.

The combined portfolio would consequently span several layers of aviation technology: piloted electric air taxis through Midnight, autonomous passenger aircraft through Wisk, long-endurance defense drones through Insitu, airspace services through SkyGrid, hybrid autonomous aircraft developed with Anduril, and aviation AI through Zee.

The deal does not remove the industry’s biggest execution risks

The scale of the portfolio does not mean the underlying challenges facing Archer or the eVTOL industry have disappeared.

Commercial eVTOL operators are still working through aircraft certification, manufacturing scale and the economics of operating entirely new transportation networks. The sector has attracted billions of dollars of investment, but large-scale passenger service has yet to become an established business.

Archer itself is still pursuing FAA certification of Midnight. In May, the company said it had completed Phase 3 of the FAA’s four-phase type-certification process and expected initial U.S. operations to begin in 2026 through the federal eVTOL pilot program. Those milestones are meaningful, but certification and broad commercial deployment remain separate steps.

Wisk faces its own certification task because it is pursuing an autonomous passenger aircraft, while SkyGrid is working on airspace systems for operating such aircraft at greater scale. Insitu is much more mature commercially, but integrating an established defense business alongside multiple development-stage aircraft and software programs introduces a different kind of execution challenge.

That makes the Boeing transaction both an expansion and a test of Archer’s ambitions. The company would no longer be defined primarily by whether Midnight succeeds as an air taxi. It would have commercial aviation, autonomous flight, defense drones, AI software and airspace-management businesses developing at the same time.

For Boeing, the arrangement reduces direct ownership of those operations while preserving access to Wisk’s autonomy technology and giving it a substantial economic interest in Archer. For Archer, the deal brings technology and operational experience that would have taken years to reproduce internally, along with Insitu’s existing revenue base.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026. Until then, Wisk, Insitu and SkyGrid remain Boeing businesses, and Archer still has to turn a much broader collection of aerospace assets into a coherent operating company.

Sources

Reuters – Archer-Boeing transaction announcement and premarket share reaction.

Archer / Wisk / Boeing – 2023 autonomous-flight collaboration and Boeing investment announcement.

Archer Aviation Investor Relations – Q2 2026 earnings schedule.