It has been three years since Archer and Wisk settled a bitter legal fight. Before that truce, Wisk's April 2021 lawsuit accused Archer of "brazen theft" of trade secrets and intellectual property.
The fight stretched on for two years before a settlement closed out both Wisk's claims and Archer's $1 billion counterclaim. Now Archer owns Wisk outright.
Boeing is selling Wisk Aero plus two related businesses, SkyGrid and Insitu, in exchange for Archer stock.
SkyGrid makes software for airspace management, and Insitu builds drones.
Boeing's new shares equal 19.75% of Archer's share count before the deal closed. That works out to roughly a 16.5% stake, according to the filing and a person with knowledge of the deal.
Under that earlier settlement, Wisk had become Archer's sole supplier of autonomous systems, the tech that lets aircraft fly themselves. Wisk also earned an option to buy up to 13,176,636 Archer common shares at $0.01 per share, a price that is close to free.
Wisk's history traces back to Kittyhawk, an electric aviation startup run by Sebastian Thrun, a co-founder of Alphabet's X lab, with funding from Larry Page. That company, Kittyhawk, shut down in September 2022, but not before its team built several aircraft.
Flyer was a one-person all-electric eVTOL, short for electric vertical takeoff and landing. Heaviside was a once-secret autonomous aircraft that was quieter and could land anywhere.
One program, Cora, was different. Cora, a two-seat self-flying air taxi, moved into a Boeing joint venture in late 2019, and that venture became Wisk.
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Boeing kept pouring money in, adding $450 million in early 2022 and owning Wisk outright by 2023. Now it has swapped that ownership for a stake in Archer.
The trade keeps Boeing involved in air taxis without having to run the company itself.
That deal is part of a broader shakeout in the eVTOL industry: Archer went public through a SPAC in 2021, later added a defense unit with a $430 million contract, and now counts Boeing as a major shareholder.
Archer was founded in 2018 and went public in 2021 through a SPAC merger, a common way for young companies to reach the stock market during that era.
It started with an air-taxi network plan and has since broadened its eVTOL work, including a big defense push.
Archer Defense received $430 million in December 2024, and the company raised another $300 million in 2025 from institutions such as BlackRock and Wellington.
There is also an exclusive pact with Anduril to co-develop a gas-and-electric hybrid VTOL for the military.
That mix of civilian and military work gives Archer two possible paths to revenue. The company also completed a piloted round trip between Salinas and Monterey earlier in August 2026.
Archer expects to start operations later in 2026 through the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program run by the White House.
The most telling part might be Boeing's choice. Boeing could have sold Wisk for cash, but instead it took new Archer shares worth about 16.5% of the company.
That is a large aerospace company putting its reputation behind the idea that electric air travel has a real future. For an investor, that is worth more than a flashy headline.
As a supplier, Wisk was already part of Archer's plans. Now it is part of Archer itself, which removes a layer of complexity.
Archer still has to prove the all-electric Midnight aircraft can work outside a test route. The 2026 pilot program is a first step, not a guarantee, and electric air travel has a long history of delays.
If electric air taxis do become part of everyday travel, the companies supplying the parts, the software, and the air-traffic systems will feel it.
Boeing's stake in Archer is an early sign that the industry's giants are betting it happens sooner than later, and that is the kind of thing that eventually shows up in earnings reports.
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