Why it matters
Wisk is building a four-passenger electric air taxi meant to fly without a pilot on board, with human supervisors on the ground. Archer's 24 September 2026 release still calls Wisk one of Boeing's subsidiaries and says Archer will acquire it, together with SkyGrid and Insitu. The equity purchase agreement is dated 9 August 2026. Closing is a later step, so the flight-test program and the ownership change have to be read separately.
The certification status is a company target. The 16 December 2025 first-flight release calls Generation 6 the subject of a type-certification application and the first candidate for an FAA-certified commercial autonomous passenger aircraft. The homepage lists type, production, and operating certificates as the path. The flight Wisk has published for this aircraft is a hover flight.
What the earlier aircraft flew
The generations page counts five aircraft before the current certification candidate. Generation 1, flown from 2011 to 2014, logged 207 flights and is credited with a full transition from vertical flight to wingborne flight and back. Generation 2, in 2015, was piloted and logged 5 flights. Generation 3, from 2015 to 2017, logged 70 flights and the company's first piloted eVTOL transition. Generation 4, from 2017 to 2018, logged 1,311 autonomous flights, including the first autonomous off-runway flight. Generation 5, from 2017 to 2024, logged 196 flights, including a public flight in Los Angeles County and a public autonomous flight at EAA AirVenture.
Those five counts add to 1,789 flights. The homepage still says the company has more than 1,750 safe test flights and more than 440 global patents. Both figures are company tallies. The full transition on this page is attributed to Generation 1. Generation 6 has its own milestone line.
Generation 6 in flight test
Generation 6 is the aircraft Wisk is presenting for certification. The generations page describes a proprietary 12-propeller fixed-wing lift-plus-cruise design, a 50-foot wingspan, and a range of 90 miles, lists autonomous flight, and gives years operational as 2020 to today. Its key-milestone line still reads Stay tuned for updates. On 17 October 2026 the homepage said two Generation 6 aircraft were in flight testing at Hollister, California. The newest press release shown there was the 26 August 2026 groundbreaking for an on-airport vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport.
The published first flight, on 16 December 2025 at Hollister, was a vertical takeoff, hover, and stabilized flight. That release said the initial phase would build out the hover regime before higher speeds, higher altitudes, longitudinal transition, lateral transition, and pedal turns. The homepage's current two-aircraft line and the generations page's Stay tuned line are the later public status. Those pages do not report a hover-to-wingborne transition.
The service Wisk describes
The operating concept in the first-flight release is an all-electric aircraft with no pilot aboard and a ground-based Multi-Vehicle Supervisor. The homepage says flight-critical systems are built with many triple-redundant paths and no single point of failure, and that certification is meant to cover the aircraft type, production, and operations. Those are design and process statements from the company.
The same first-flight release names Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami as launch markets. It does not give a service date. The sources used here do not state a fare, recognized revenue, or a funded passenger order. Wisk is still describing a flight-test program and a certification project.
Archer's agreement to buy Wisk
Under the 9 August 2026 agreement, Archer would acquire Wisk Aero LLC, SkyGrid, LLC, and Insitu, Inc., plus related entities named in the 8-K: Insitu Pacific Pty Ltd, Wisk Australia Pty Ltd, and Boeing Emirates Ltd. Boeing's consideration is Archer Class A shares equal to 19.75 percent of the Class A shares outstanding immediately before closing, subject to adjustments for the targets' cash, debt, and transaction expenses, plus two warrants. Each warrant is for a share count equal to $100 million divided by the pre-closing volume-weighted price. One is exercisable from 12 to 36 months after closing at $13.00. The other is exercisable from 12 to 48 months at $17.88. Consideration shares are locked up for 12 months, with stated exceptions. While Boeing holds at least 10 percent of the pre-close Class A count, including shares issued on warrant exercise, it may designate one director. At closing the parties are to grant each other restricted intellectual-property licenses. Archer may also elect, on one occasion before the later of 31 March 2027 and three months after closing, to sell Boeing up to $55 million of stock inside an offering of at least $400 million.
Archer's 24 September 2026 release said the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period expired at 11:59 p.m. EDT on 18 September 2026 and that this satisfied one closing condition. It said other regulatory approvals were still underway and that closing was expected by the end of 2026. The 8-K defines that remaining regulatory condition as certain approvals under national-security or foreign-direct-investment laws, and it also requires New York Stock Exchange listing of the consideration shares. The 8-K does not name CFIUS, FIRB, or a UAE review. Either party may terminate the agreement if closing has not occurred by 9 May 2027, and each may extend that date by three months if only the regulatory condition remains. Australian and Emirates legal entities are inside the purchased group, and the public filing still does not identify which approval files are open.
What is still open
The flight-test question and the closing question are both unresolved in public. The generations page still has no Generation 6 milestone past Stay tuned for updates, and the homepage still describes two aircraft in Hollister flight testing, with the 26 August 2026 vertiport release as its newest listed press release. On the transaction, antitrust waiting-period clearance is done and the national-security and foreign-investment approvals are not named. Archer's stated expectation is a close by the end of 2026. The contract's outside date is 9 May 2027, with a possible three-month regulatory extension.
These sources do not say what Archer will do with Generation 6 certification after closing. The December 2025 release records Sebastien Vigneron as chief executive and describes Wisk as a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary as of that date. Archer's September 2026 release is the later ownership statement, and it still says Archer will acquire Boeing's Wisk.