Turns out everyone still really loves a tiny little plane.
Yesterday, autonomous aviation company (and Anduril BFF) Joby Aviation ($JOBY) announced that its US Air Force autonomy contracts have grown to nearly $37M in total commitments, up from roughly $20M previously.
- The contracts—awarded through AFWERX—support the development of Joby’s Superpilot autonomy software and operational testing of autonomous cargo aircraft.
- The Air Force has also increased the ceiling on Joby’s operational testing contract tenfold, from $5M to $50M.
- The contract increases were disclosed in Joby’s Q3 shareholder letter (along with expected FY2026 revenue of $135-140M, up 15 percent from previous guidance). Shares climbed nearly 8 percent intraday before closing up just over 4 percent.
The increases come after Joby completed an autonomous flight (on a Cessna Caravan) across the continental US—3,199 miles from Concord, CA to North Carolina’s Outer Banks—back in September.
“This contract expansion is a powerful validation of the adaptability of Joby’s autonomy stack,” Joby Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement. “This funding will accelerate our path to sustained uncrewed operations, delivering a single software solution that solves critical logistics challenges for both the U.S. military and cargo industries.”
Mile high club: Now, Joby didn’t start out as a defense company. Bevirt founded the company back in 2009 (yeah, pre-2010s, y’all) to build eVTOLs that could taxi people around crowded cities.
- Their foray into defense came through a DIU (actually DIUx, at the time) contract in 2016 to develop and prototype its eVTOLs for, well, defense.
- The company started working with the Air Force through AFWERX’s Agility Prime program in 2020, and has over $100M in contracts with the government, according to Obviant data.
- They’ve also teamed up with both Anduril and L3Harris to develop a hybrid-electric eVTOL aircraft for the military.
- Plus, in August, Joby announced plans to acquire defense contractor Resonant Sciences for ~$500M. The company specializes in electronic warfare, sensing, and low-observability tech, basically giving Joby a fully-formed, ready-to-go defense business. The deal is expected to close early next year.
Look ma, no hands: Joby’s autonomy work—those initial eVTOLs were human-piloted—came into full swing when they acquired the autonomy division of Xwing back in June 2024.
- Xwing first demonstrated its autonomy software, Superpilot, with the Air Force in early 2024.
- After Joby took over, they continued developing the autonomy program alongside the service—they scored their first official $17M autonomy contract in July 2025.
- The company says the program has completed 400 fully autonomous flights to date, and has carried out contested logistics missions during exercises including the Air Force’s Agile Flag.
- Worth noting—the focus here is very much on contested logistics. AFWERX’s Contested Logistics Tactical Airlift Lead, Kate Brown, said that this new award is part of the service’s broader “goal [of sustaining] cargo operations in contested environments while reducing risk to aircrews and preserving crewed aircraft for missions that require them.”
Next day delivery: This new award basically takes the work Joby was already doing and levels it way the heck up.
- The company says the funding will “support ongoing design updates and safety reviews to extend the operational capabilities of Joby’s autonomy stack.”
- While the focus here is on the defense-y side of things, the company also says it will keep building out autonomous operations on the civvie side too—especially for things like cargo delivery.
“We designed this system to be platform-agnostic, letting us quickly bring advanced autonomy to a wide range of high-utility aircraft,” Bevirt said.
