Joby and Metropolis Announce Partnership to Develop 25 Vertiport Sites Across USA, Using New And Existing Facilities

Joby Avi­a­tion has announced a part­ner­ship with Metrop­o­lis Tech­nolo­gies to devel­op 25 ver­ti­ports across the Unit­ed States, util­is­ing Metrop­o­lis’ exten­sive net­work of park­ing loca­tions.

The part­ner­ship will incor­po­rate Metrop­o­lis’ AI-based recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, as well the company’s exten­sive foot­print across avi­a­tion and bag­gage ser­vices.

Fol­low­ing its $1.5 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of SP+, and $1.6 bil­lion Series D financ­ing, Metrop­o­lis is the largest park­ing net­work and oper­a­tor in North Amer­i­ca, oper­at­ing more than 4,200 park­ing loca­tions, as well as avi­a­tion ser­vices in over 350 loca­tions.

The planned ver­ti­ports will be strate­gi­cal­ly select­ed across Metrop­o­lis’ port­fo­lio in ear­ly elec­tric air taxi mar­kets and use Metrop­o­lis’ com­put­er vision tech­nol­o­gy; the com­pa­nies will be eval­u­at­ing both new and exist­ing facil­i­ties for the inte­gra­tion of ver­ti­ports.

JoeBen Bevirt, CEO and founder of Joby, said: “For air taxis to deliv­er on their promise of seam­less urban trav­el, they must con­nect direct­ly with the exist­ing ground trans­porta­tion ecosys­tem. 

“By lever­ag­ing exist­ing park­ing infra­struc­ture to cre­ate mobil­i­ty hubs, we can deliv­er on our vision of seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty for our cus­tomers and also max­i­mize the val­ue of those sites with­out need­ing to build infra­struc­ture from scratch.”

The com­pa­nies plan to lever­age Metrop­o­lis’ world-class tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing bio­met­rics, broad­er com­put­er vision and ser­vices like bag­gage han­dling, to accel­er­ate Joby’s efforts to inte­grate its air taxi ser­vice direct­ly into exist­ing ground trans­porta­tion hubs and deploy com­pact, high-through­put ver­ti­port designs that sat­is­fy safe­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards.

Under its Bags Inc. sub­sidiary, Metrop­o­lis will ini­tial­ly bring its Bags VIP ser­vice to Joby’s Blade Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, which pro­vides flights between Man­hat­tan and JFK or Newark air­ports in five min­utes, bypass­ing up to two hours of traf­fic and elim­i­nat­ing com­mon air­port pain points.

By pro­vid­ing bag­gage han­dling to Blade pas­sen­gers in the New York City area, this part­ner­ship will remove fric­tion and allow more peo­ple to take advan­tage of Blade’s ser­vice with­out need­ing to wor­ry about lug­gage require­ments.

Metrop­o­lis already oper­ates park­ing, advanced lug­gage logis­tics, remote check-in and in-ter­mi­nal guest ser­vices that stream­line the trav­el­er expe­ri­ence across more than 350 air­ports in North Amer­i­ca.

Com­ment­ing on the part­ner­ship, Metrop­o­lis CEO Alex Israel added: “The real world is the next fron­tier for AI, and our part­ner­ship with Joby marks a crit­i­cal first step in expand­ing the Metrop­o­lis plat­form into true mobil­i­ty hubs to deliv­er remark­able val­ue for Mem­bers and part­ners alike.

“This trans­for­ma­tion­al part­ner­ship is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Applied AI in the phys­i­cal world. We are tak­ing the data and recog­ni­tion capa­bil­i­ties we’ve built in our net­work and extend­ing it to air trav­el, cre­at­ing the seam­less, per­son­al­ized, and mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence that is the foun­da­tion of the Recog­ni­tion Econ­o­my.”

Metrop­o­lis is an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence com­pa­ny for the real world. Its Com­put­er Vision plat­form elim­i­nates fric­tion from dai­ly life, pow­ers check­out-free pay­ments and unlocks seam­less, pre­dic­tive and per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences every­where con­sumers trans­act.

Metrop­o­lis is pio­neer­ing the Recog­ni­tion Econ­o­my, trans­form­ing phys­i­cal spaces into respon­sive envi­ron­ments with an Intel­li­gence Lay­er that under­stands pres­ence, antic­i­pates needs and per­son­al­izes moments. Lever­ag­ing AI, Metrop­o­lis’ plat­form under­stands, adapts and responds to Mem­bers in real time.

To learn more, please vis­it www.metropolis.io.