Archer Aviation agreed on 10 August to acquire three Boeing subsidiaries — Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid — with Boeing taking an equity stake in Archer instead of a cash payment.
The consideration is stock
Boeing receives newly issued Archer shares equal to 19.75% of Archer's pre-close outstanding count, leaving it with roughly 16.5% of the combined company. No cash purchase price was disclosed. The 16.5% figure appears in Boeing's investor release, not on Wisk's page — cite accordingly.
What Archer gets
Insitu is the substantive asset: more than $200m in annual revenue, over 3,500 systems built, operations across 35 nations and VTOL-capable uncrewed aircraft. Wisk brings autonomous eVTOL flight testing — 1,700+ flight tests — and SkyGrid brings airspace management. Archer folds the autonomy work into ZEE, which it describes as a foundation model purpose-built for aerospace and defence.
Former litigants
Archer and Wisk sued each other over trade secrets and settled in 2023, with Wisk designated Archer's exclusive autonomy provider. This supersedes that arrangement by buying the counterparty outright.
Signed, not closed
Definitive agreements are in place but the deal is subject to the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period, with closing expected at the end of 2026. The "nearly two million flight hours" is a combined total across three companies, not Archer's own record, and Insitu's revenue figure is company-attributed rather than audited.
A defence business bought with paper
Archer is still pre-revenue on its core aircraft, and paying in stock rather than cash lets it absorb a revenue-generating defence unit without spending the balance sheet it needs to certify one. The trade is dilution — existing holders give up roughly a sixth of the company — and whether that is cheap depends on Insitu's revenue holding up under new ownership.