“Archer To Purchase LA Airport As Air Taxi Network Hub, AI Testbed”

Archer Avi­a­tion announced late last week, it is pur­chas­ing Hawthorne Air­port in Los Ange­les for a cash sum of USD126 mil­lion, reports a press release.

The air­port is locat­ed in the heart of the City, less than three miles from LAX, and the clos­est to some of the city’s biggest des­ti­na­tions includ­ing SoFi Sta­di­um, The Forum, Intu­it Dome and Down­town LA.

Archer aims to use the air­port as an oper­a­tional hub for its planned LA air taxi net­work, as well as a test bed for AI-pow­ered avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies it is devel­op­ing with air­line and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners. 

Michael Lesk­i­nen, CFO of major investor Unit­ed Air­lines, com­ment­ed, “Archer’s tra­jec­to­ry val­i­dates our con­vic­tion that eVTOLs are part of the next gen­er­a­tion of air traf­fic tech­nol­o­gy that will fun­da­men­tal­ly reshape avi­a­tion.” 

He con­tin­ued, “Their vision for an AI-enabled oper­a­tions plat­form isn’t just about eVTOLs, it’s also about lever­ag­ing cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy to bet­ter enable mov­ing peo­ple safe­ly and effi­cient­ly in our most con­gest­ed air­spaces.”

This news came amid Archer’s release of its Q3 2025 finan­cial results. Once more the com­pa­ny has fol­lowed its main U.S rival, Joby Avi­a­tion, by rais­ing new equi­ty cap­i­tal. Archer gained USD650 mil­lion tak­ing its total liq­uid­i­ty to over USD2 bil­lion.

This pleased the mar­ket and investors as it shows the com­pa­ny has suf­fi­cient mon­ey to bring its air­craft to the com­mer­cial mar­ket. Yet, the equi­ty raise also dis­pleas­es share­hold­ers as this dilutes the present share val­ue. So, this mixed mes­sage only exac­er­bat­ed the recent sell-off of Archer’s share price. Dur­ing the last five trad­ing days, for exam­ple, the price has fall­en over 26 per­cent clos­ing at USD8.18 on Fri­day.

In fact, there was a gen­er­al elec­tric air taxi share sell-off last week. For exam­ple, Joby Avi­a­tion saw a fall close to 12 per­cent and the star of the week,  BETA Tech­nolo­gies, who came to mar­ket  on Tues­day with all bells ring­ing, after a small but grad­ual share price rise from its open­ing USD34 to USD38, real­i­ty struck on Fri­day with  a fall of USD9.86 per­cent clos­ing at USD32 or a USD2 loss on the week.

Mid­night ‘wow­ing’ tens of thou­sands of onlook­ers at the recent Inter­na­tion­al Cal­i­for­nia Air­show

Yet, investors have much to look for­ward to.

The Dubai Air­show opens in sev­en days and with the promise that fly­ing taxis will be cen­tre stage at the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious air event, the glob­al media could be all over this fledg­ling indus­try like a rash, espe­cial­ly when live fly­ing demon­stra­tions are immi­nent. Dun­can Walk­er, Founder and CEO of Sky­ports, whose com­pa­ny is present­ly con­struct­ing sev­er­al ver­ti­ports in Dubai, claimed dur­ing a recent inter­view that com­mer­cial flights are to begin in the city come March (!)

Per­haps, for the brave this ‘could be’ a good time to buy shares in com­pa­nies like Archer, Joby and BETA dur­ing the present sell-off. Mean­while, do not for­get Elon Musk’s recent rev­e­la­tion that Tes­la is to unveil a pro­to­type of its own fly­ing car before the year is done. So, momen­tum may build lead­ing up to Christ­mas.

Plen­ty to look for­ward to.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://archer.com

(Top image: Archer’s devel­op­ment plans for Hawthorne Air­port)

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(Please do your own research and make your own deci­sions before invest­ing in elec­tric air taxi shares)