Joby Aviation acquires Xwing's autonomy division

Electric aviation company Joby today acquired the autonomy division of Xwing, a start-up that has worked with the Air Force Research Laboratory on several unmanned cargo missions since it was founded in 2016.

“The acquisition covers all of Xwing’s existing automation and autonomy technology activities and was paid for with Joby shares. Terms of the deal were not disclosed,” according to a Joby news release.

The Air Force in February awarded Xwing a Military Flight Release to fly cargo missions across California after the small company successfully completed the AGILE FLAG 24-1 Joint Force exercise, making it the first-ever to receive such a designation under the AFRL’s AFWERX Autonomy Prime program.

Autonomy Prime is an arm of the AFWERX program, which intends to bring small businesses and startups to the table to address the Air Force’s top priorities, including artificial intelligence and strengthening the industrial base. The goal is to better facilitate the transition from research and technology to operational capability.

Joby hopes this new acquisition can help build out its defense portfolio, as technology development will remain a top priority for the newly integrated business, the company said in the news release. Joby is already also collaborating with the Pentagon on electric vertical takeoff and landing air taxis. The idea, the company said, is for these air taxis to eventually fly autonomously to make for even safer and more efficient missions.

“The aircraft we are certifying will have a fully qualified pilot on board, but we recognize that a future generation of autonomous aircraft will play an important part in unlocking our vision of making clean and affordable aerial mobility as accessible as possible,” Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement. “The exceptionally talented Xwing team has not only made unparalleled progress on the development and certification of vision systems, sensor fusion and decision-making autonomous technologies, but they’ve also successfully demonstrated the real-life application of their technology, flying hundreds of fully autonomous flights in the national airspace.”