FLYING Magazine
Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft developer Joby Aviation on Tuesday announced a $500 million acquisition that it said will deepen its ties in defense while accelerating commercialization of its electric VTOL (eVTOL) air taxi.
The company said its “definitive agreement” to acquire Dayton, Ohio-based Resonant Sciences for $500 million is expected to close in early 2027. The deal includes about $50 million in Joby common stock. Resonant will operate under the same name and retain its CEO and co-founder, J. Micah North, while Joby’s core business will narrow focus to certification of the S4—its civil, four-passenger electric aircraft announced back in 2020.
Joby said Resonant will become its “dedicated defense business,” adding the manufacturer’s hybrid-electric aircraft and autonomy technologies to the latter’s portfolio, which includes radio frequency (RF), sensing, electronics and communication systems, and mission systems capabilities.
Beyond its commercial eVTOL air taxi, Joby is developing hydrogen-electric and turbine-electric, optionally piloted variants, as well as the Superpilot autonomy stack it acquired from Xwing in 2024.
Resonant specializes in what the company describes as “low observability” aircraft technology. Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt wrote in a blog post that its products help aircraft “see, communicate, and operate more safely in difficult environments, while remaining unseen themselves.”
Bevirt added that Resonant will continue to supply existing customers.
“What changes is the scale of what we can build and deliver,” North said in announcing the acquisition.
He added that the combination will allow Joby and Resonant to “pursue opportunities that neither company could address alone.” According to Joby, these include “next generation platforms, which reflect a broader shift in defense priorities toward autonomous, lower-cost aircraft.”
Illustrating this, the U.S. military seeks hundreds of collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) to pair with crewed fighter jets, serving as autonomous “loyal wingmen.” Partners Anduril and Archer Aviation, one of Joby’s eVTOL rivals, are pursuing a concept in that vein.
Digging Into Defense
Over the past few years, companies such as Joby that started out developing commercial eVTOL air taxis have increasingly shifted focus to defense applications.
Archer and Anduril plan to pitch the Pentagon on their Thunder platform, which they unveiled in July. Archer in 2024 established a dedicated Archer Defense unit and earlier this week acquired military drone provider Insitu from Boeing—a deal that also included the latter’s Wisk Aero autonomous air taxi unit.
Beta Technologies is also developing aircraft to improve the military’s range, speed, and costs. In July it unveiled the hybrid-electric, autonomous MV-250, built in partnership with GE Aerospace and Sikorsky and using Beta’s internally developed autonomy systems.
Both Archer and Beta have delivered aircraft to the military for evaluation, as has Joby under a $131 million contract. But the latter said Resonant Sciences will enhance that relationship with established programs—including “active U.S. national security programs”—as well as “classified capabilities and scaled manufacturing operations.”
The shift toward defense is helping eVTOL manufacturers stay afloat as they burn heaps of cash certifying and commercializing their civil air taxis.
Joby said Resonant raked in more than $100 million over the past 12 months, with 40 percent growth year over year. The company’s backlog in the first half of 2026 more than doubled on an annual basis due to surging bookings, it said. Many Resonant personnel and facilities have the necessary security clearances for sensitive projects, Joby added.
Blade Air Mobility, whose passenger division Joby acquired in 2025, accounted for nearly all of its second-quarter 2026 revenue. The company ended the quarter with about $2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, it said.
Joby’s Realignment
Joby in 2024 acquired Xwing and later flew an autonomous Cessna 208B Caravan more than 7,000 miles during a U.S. Air Force exercise in the Pacific. In November, it conducted the first test flight of the autonomous, turbine-electric, VTOL demonstrator it is developing in partnership with L3Harris for defense applications, only three months after announcing the concept. It is also designing a longer-range, hydrogen-electric variant.
Joby said Tuesday that those projects will be “consolidated” under the new defense business.
“Housing our defense work within Resonant will create a clear home for those initiatives and allow our wider commercial aviation organization to stay focused on certifying, manufacturing, and commercializing our electric air taxi,” Bevirt said in a statement.
Per Joby, Resonant will “accelerate autonomy and expand the applications” for its technology. One early focus, it said, will be combining its autonomy stack with Resonant’s RF sensing and signal processing technology. The goal would be to create “software-defined autonomous systems.”
Resonant was founded in 2015 and is based in Dayton, one of two locations where Joby aims to churn out 500 air taxis per year. It owns 768,000 square feet of facilities in Ohio. The company said Resonant’s own 105,000 square feet of space—soon to be augmented by a 125,000-square-foot facility—will give it more than 1 billion square feet in the region to use for manufacturing and testing.
“The team at Resonant builds their technology just a few miles from the bicycle shop where the Wright brothers began the work that made powered flight possible,” Bevirt wrote in his blog post.
Among the conditions required to be met before the deal closes is national security approval from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). Per Aviation International News, that could prevent Resonant from working with foreign companies, including Joby investor and manufacturing partner Toyota Motor Co.