Archer to develop hybrid VTOL military aircraft with Anduril and raises additional $430 million in equity capital

Anduril and Archer have announced an exclu­sive part­ner­ship to joint­ly devel­op a hybrid VTOL air­craft for crit­i­cal defense appli­ca­tions, tar­get­ing a poten­tial pro­gram of record from the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Defense (DOD).  

With Archer’s abil­i­ty to rapid­ly devel­op advanced VTOL air­craft using exist­ing com­mer­cial parts and sup­ply chains, and Anduril’s deep exper­tise in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, mis­sion­i­sa­tion and sys­tems inte­gra­tion, the part­ner­ship will accel­er­ate speed to mar­ket for crit­i­cal hybrid VTOL capa­bil­i­ties at a frac­tion of the cost of more tra­di­tion­al alter­na­tives. 

Archer’s efforts on this project will be part of its new Defense Pro­gram.

To sup­port this ini­tia­tive and for oth­er gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es, Archer raised $430 mil­lion in addi­tion­al equi­ty cap­i­tal, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Stel­lan­tis, Unit­ed Air­lines and new insti­tu­tion­al investors, includ­ing Welling­ton Man­age­ment and Abu Dhabi invest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny 2PointZero, a sub­sidiary of UAE’S largest list­ed enti­ty, IHC.

Archer end­ed Q3 24 with $502 mil­lion of cash and cash equiv­a­lents on its bal­ance sheet and this raise brings Archer’s total cap­i­tal raised to near­ly $2 bil­lion to date.

Fol­low­ing this cap­i­tal raise, and togeth­er with Archer’s oth­er announced financ­ing arrange­ments, the com­pa­ny says it is now well-posi­tioned with one of the sec­tor’s lead­ing bal­ance sheets with no near-term financ­ing needs.

Adam Gold­stein, founder and CEO of Archer, said: “The Archer team has deep exper­tise in the rapid design, engi­neer­ing, and pro­duc­tion of next-gen­er­a­tion ver­ti­cal-lift air­craft. With Anduril by our side, and this new influx of cap­i­tal, we will accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of advanced aero­space tech­nolo­gies at scale.” 

Archer Defense will be led by its Head of Advanced Projects, Joseph Pan­talone. Mr. Pan­talone recent­ly joined Archer and is a sea­soned leader in mil­i­tary avi­a­tion with near­ly 30 years of expe­ri­ence at Lock­heed Mar­tin and Siko­rsky.

He will draw from the con­tin­ued sup­port of Archer’s world-class Defense Advi­so­ry Board, which was formed in May of 2023 and is made up of high­ly dec­o­rat­ed and dis­tin­guished retired mil­i­tary lead­ers. 

Shane Arnott, SVP of Engi­neer­ing at Anduril, said: “Rapid inno­va­tion and scal­able pro­duc­tion are crit­i­cal for main­tain­ing tech­no­log­i­cal supe­ri­or­i­ty. Anduril and Archer share a com­mon vision for advanc­ing capa­bil­i­ties that meet urgent nation­al secu­ri­ty needs, and we look for­ward to part­ner­ing with Archer to bring advanced ver­ti­cal lift air­craft to our cus­tomers.”