Joby Acquires Autonomy Division of Xwing, “Eye on Autonomous Flight”
Joby Aviation announced this week the acquisition of the autonomy division of Xwing, a leader in developing autonomous flight technology, reports a press release. This supports Joby’s long-term vision of making aerial mobility as accessible as possible through the adoption of autonomous technologies.
The purchase “is expected to accelerate existing and potential future contracts with the U.S Department of Defence (DOD) and underscores Joby’s leadership position as a next generation aviation company,” says the release.
Founded in 2016, Xwing has been flying autonomous aircraft since 2020, using the Superpilot software it has developed in-house. “ Superpilot enables safe, uncrewed operations, supervised from the ground,” continues the release “and is the world’s first fully autonomous gate-to-gate flight technology.”
Boasting more than 250 fully autonomous flights and 500 auto-landings, Xwing became the first company to receive an official project designation for the certification of a large unmanned aerial system (UAS) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in April 2023, and the first to receive an Air Force Military Flight Release in 2024.
JoeBen Bevirt, Joby’s Founder and CEO, commented, “The aircraft we are certifying will have a fully-qualified pilot on board, but we recognise 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.”
The acquisition brings Joby to the forefront of aviation autonomy and complements the company’s 2021 purchase of Inras, a company developing lightweight, high-performance radar sensor technology.

Xwing Aircraft Involved in USAF Autonomy Tests (Credit: Xwing)
The release continues, “Xwing’s comprehensive approach, and expertise in perception technology, system integration and certification, is expected to benefit both near-term piloted operations for Joby as well as fully autonomous operations in the future.”
And goes on, “The company also expects the technology to play an important role in accelerating the execution of existing contract deliverables with the U.S DOD and expanding the potential for future contracts.”
Bevirt continued, “The 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.”
A wide range of engineers, researchers and technologists from Xwing will now be integrated into Joby, where they’ll focus on the increased automation and autonomy roadmap for the Joby aircraft as well as expanding opportunities to partner with the DOD on technology development.
Maxime Gariel, co-Founder, President and CTO of Xwing, remarked, “Xwing’s goal of connecting communities with clean and affordable autonomous flight aligns closely with Joby’s long-term vision. For the past 7 years, our team has broken barriers to advance aviation autonomy.” Adding, “Now, as we join forces with the leading electric air-taxi developer, I can’t imagine a better home for the Xwing team to realize our shared vision.”
Xwing’s autonomous flights were completed using a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan aircraft, allowing the team to focus on areas such as vision system processing, detect and avoid algorithms, mission management including trajectory planning and real-time updates, decision making, ground control stations, remote operations and the integration of AI and machine learning algorithms.

Maxime Gariel
In early 2024, the aircraft participated in the Air Force’s Agile Flag 24–1 Joint Force exercise, during which it completed daily flights, covering around 2,800 miles and landing at eight public and military airports, demonstrating the ability to integrate autonomous aircraft into the national airspace system.
Col. Elliott Leigh, AFWERX Director and COO for the Department of the Air Force, said, ”Autonomous systems are increasingly common in the private sector and offer potentially game changing advantages to the Air Force as well,. We created Autonomy Prime to keep up with this shift, and to stay engaged as a partner while this technology evolves, so that we can adapt and evolve along with the private sector, maintaining our competitive advantage.”
Joby’s acquisition covers all of Xwing’s existing automation and autonomy technology activities and was paid for with Joby shares. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
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(Top image: Joby Aviation)
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