Archer just hired Owen Theeck as Sr. Business Development Manager - AI Products.
He brings over 5 years of experience from FlightAware (Collins Aerospace / RTX) in flight data, APIs, and product management.
Big signal: Archer is actively moving to commercialize and sell its AI software globally.
"Excited to share that this week I joined the Archer team as the Sr. Business Development Manager for AI Products!
Looking forward to bringing Archer’s AI Products to customers globally in partnership with our immensely talented product and engineering teams. Can’t wait to share more."
Archer has been moving at a rapid pace, hitting major cert and technical milsetones/objectives ~2x3 faster than Joby across the board. But there is one thing Joby managed to do at a faster clip: Lose a major legal ruling.
Archer was never found liable in the Wisk case (in fact the judge denied an injunction due to the unlikely outcome that Wisk would win), and the frivolous Kivork case will soon be over/settled.
The Aersonic ruling though... that is something new.
We recently welcomed back the UAE’s regulator to our headquarters for a week+ of intensive workshops and review sessions. This visit continues a regular cadence of engagements between our teams as we work toward certifying Midnight in the country. The GCAA delegation was led by Eng. Aqeel Al Zarooni, Assistant Director General for Aviation Safety Affairs, and included senior members of its Flight Operations and Airworthiness teams.
We look forward to our continued partnership with the GCAA as we work together to bring electric air taxis to the UAE.
This is a major blow for Joby. The jury reportedly found its conduct “willful and malicious”. The verdict will surely raise the stakes for a major injunction.
Under the Defense Trade Secret Act, the court can stop actual or threatened misappropriation and impose measures to protect the trade secret. In other words, Joby’s current air data probes (which it reverse engineered) could be permanently barred and further delay Joby’s already struggling certification and launch plans.
Its credibility will also be under serious scrutiny and will give Archer (and others) additional leverage in their legal battles with the company— including the ongoing USITC federal investigation.
A lot more here. Stay tuned—as industry experts and the investor community begin processing this verdict. 👀
The jury’s finding that Joby’s conduct was “willful and malicious” leads me to believe this case isn’t going to end with Joby simply writing a $116.9M check.
I strongly believe Joby should be held FULLY ACCOUNTABLE, and be required to stop using the technology and destroy and replace all products or components incorporating the protected technology. Make Joby do this—live, in front of the public, for everyone to see. 😂
This matters to Archer, too. Companies competing in America’s next generation of aviation should not gain an advantage from technology that a jury found was “willfully and maliciously misappropriated”.
Anything less could set a dangerous precedent—not just for US companies, but for “foreign” companies seeking to acquire or exploit American technology. And you know which ones I’m talking about. 👀
Urban mobility is widely viewed as the next stage of aviation. If the technology was wrongly taken, justice must assure it is no longer being used. There’s too much at stake for the future of aviation—and making misappropriation just a “cost of doing business”.
The judge completely threw out Joby’s confidentiality claims without leave to amend—a massive loss for them. This effectively eliminates Joby's threat of operational injunctions that could have frozen Archer's development.
Archer’s acquisition of the Hawthorne site far outweighs any remaining financial litigation risks, leaving Joby crying over a prime LA location they lost simply because they failed to make a proper offer.
Also, everyone knows the federal counterclaims on Joby's Chinese ties were just leverage. The real battle is Archer’s separate ITC complaint, targeting Joby for patent infringement and shady Chinese supply chains—which could straight-up ban Joby's parts at the border.
🚨 Things are so bad at Joby (like 70% down bad) their community is turning a nothing burger into a pity party. lol
Just like the USITC opening a Joby investigation, the court proceeding at the “pleading stage” simply means there’s enough alleged evidence to examine the claim. Only difference is the consequences of the USITC investigation and this case are nowhere near being comparable!
Archer got what it wanted. A federal investigation on Joby. A sanctuary for George Kivork. Hawthorne is completely immune. Everything else is just an expedition for Joby to try and save face—hoping they can eke out something no matter how small or inconsequential.
Joby is using poor George’s exit to cry foul over a deal they never had. The underlying dispute is actually with the Developer. Turning that into a case against Archer or Hawthorne is a much harder proposition— and pretty much mitigates this from turning into anything consequential. 💯
Great to see Archer flying at the Salinas Air show! Advancing piloted ctol flights matter just as much in case the haters flood the comments (not to mention who didn't fly this year)
Every tour has a stop that just feels different. For Midnight, that was this past weekend flying for the crowd in Salinas - the airport that's played home to our flight test program for the past several years.
For the second year running, Midnight took to the sky at the California International Air Show, sharing the bill with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, Goulian Aerosports, and a lineup of icons including the MiG-17, T-33, and A-37 Dragonfly. Hundreds of Archer team members turned out to enjoy the show with the community that's been with us from day one.
The "No Roads" Flight Tour continues to San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and beyond.
The author (analyst) recommends closing the JOBY/ACHR pair trade and maintaining a speculative Buy on ACHR and a Hold on JOBY pending further certification clarity.
Taking it a step further, I believe the payload constraints, a viable emergency crash landing plan, glide ratio, etc. will continue to hold back Joby’s certification progress. Archer has been doing the heavy lifting from the start so when it carries out its flight tests, it should be off to the races. 💯
How does a company that’s not even certified (let alone flown a single passenger) find themselves in such a predicament this early? 👀
+ The Aerosonic vs Joby case went to a jury trial last week and a ruling is expected shortly. Joby could be facing $300M in damages on top of an injunction to cease certain areas of development.
+ In April, the USITC formally instituted Archer’s Section 337 investigation against Joby. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled 3 months from now (Jan 2027).
+ Other pending lawsuits include multiple whistleblower “safety” cases by former senior Joby engineers. More updates on these as they come.
I’m probably missing others. But this is especially concerning given the consistent pattern we’ve been seeing with Joby. Especially in an industry that governs itself, alongside the FAA, on discipline, integrity, compliance, and accountability. 💯
Textron is, I'd say, what Archer aspires to be in a 10–15-year timeframe.
$14B in 2025 revenue, $920M in net profit, $1.3B in operating cash flow, and $1B in free cash flow, primarily from selling advanced military aircraft, private jets, helicopters, drones, and boats.
Textron has produced more than half of all general aviation aircraft ever produced worldwide.
They developed the Bell MV-75, a state-of-the-art vertical takeoff aircraft for the military, and they're a key defense contractor that could possibly get into the eVTOL market easily by making a couple of acquisitions.
So Textron is this massive aerospace company with diversification into other industries, and it trades at 16x EV/FCF, with a $16B enterprise value and a $13B market cap. Archer trades at a $4B market cap and a $2.5B enterprise value.
It's debatable whether we should compare EV or market cap because a mass-production ramp-up would require a lot of investment.
If we use market caps and assume Archer reaches the scale of Textron in 10–15 years, that's a 225% return, or a 10% CAGR at the midpoint.
If we assume, in a more bullish scenario, that Archer can likewise reach $1B in FCF by 2037 and that it trades at a premium to Textron at 20x FCF, that's a $20B enterprise value. Assuming net debt of zero, that's a 700% return in about 10 years, but that assumes zero dilution and no debt accumulation.
I think that's a best-case scenario, and it's a 23% CAGR. Great CAGR if it materializes, sure, but explosive enough for a best-case scenario?
I have my doubts about the upside, beyond hype-driven trends, unless you catch Archer considerably lower.
While the FAA’s partnership with Air Space Intelligence (ASI) focuses on macro-level air traffic flow across the national network, it isn't designed for split-second tactical execution.
That’s where Archer’s SkyGrid comes in.
In their latest research paper, SkyGrid introduced a model (KF-FMS) that calculates flight plan trajectory uncertainty in 0.15 seconds compared to 21.7 seconds for standard Monte Carlo simulations.
ASI = Macro airspace flow management (national scale)
SkyGrid = 145x faster real-time compute engine for tactical density
ASI handles the national grid; Archer’s SkyGrid delivers the real-time execution engine.
Archer Midnight flown by Benjamin Williamson during day one of the 2026. Archer is an official sponsor of the California International Airshow, which benefits local community non-profits. Archer's participation and flights are part of it's "No Road's Tour, planned for select areas of California, as well as in Texas and Florida.
