Flying Taxis Find Their First Real Customers on the Battlefield — Not in the Hamptons

You are now in the queue for your flying taxi. Ahead of you, troop pickup in the European battlefield. While companies developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft spent years pitching investors on shuttling passengers across congested cities, they’re now racing to reposition their technology for battlefield applications. The shift comes as defense budgets surge globally and Pentagon reforms favor nimble startups over legacy contractors, creating what some CEOs think could be a bigger market than commercial air taxis for the next decade.

Uber but for troops: Archer AviationACHR

CEO Adam Goldstein believes “the defense side could end up being larger than the civil side, at least for the first 10 years.” eVTOL’s inherent versatility allows for a wide range of military applications — from troop transport and reconnaissance to medical evacuation. Partnerships like these also provide crucial funding and real-world testing environments that accelerate development and offer potential test cases for civilian uses, whereas building air taxis requires rigorous certification from authorities like the FAA and EASA, which focus on public safety.

• Last week, US-based Joby AviationJOBY
  completed its first defense aircraft test flight with L3Harris just three months after launch, helping drive its stock up 82.8% this year.
• The wars in Ukraine and Gaza showed that cheap unmanned systems can overpower costly weapons, accelerating a shift toward asymmetric, volume‑driven warfare.

Money Changes Everything

The timing couldn’t be better for eVTOL firms chasing defense contracts. Aerospace and defense earnings per share are forecast to surge 56% in 2025, 22% in 2026, and 16% in 2027 — and analysts believe even those projections might prove conservative. European defense tech investment hit $1B in 2024 for the first time — a fivefold jump since 2018 — with Lithuania poised to spend up to 6% of GDP on defense. And UK-based Vertical AerospaceEVTL

finds itself uniquely positioned as the only remaining European eVTOL developer after Germany’s Volocopter filed for bankruptcy and Lilium ceased operations.

• The company created a defense unit in Dec. 2024 and teamed with Anduril on hybrid‑electric military aircraft, a move that quickly brought in $430M from existing investors.
• Vertical Aerospace unveiled a hybrid‑electric VX4 variant with a 1K‑mile range, ten times its commercial model, which has already secured over 1.5K preorders.

Sky-high burn rate: The pivot to defense is a financial necessity for these firms, burning through billions trying to get certification. Despite trading with a $14B market cap, Joby Aviation generated just $23M in revenue in the recent quarter, while Vertical is still pre-revenue. Joby, Archer, and Vertical Aerospace have raised $2.82B, $3.36B, and $468.8M to date, and will need to raise more to fund their annual cash burns. Vertical Aerospace isn’t expected to ramp up manufacturing until it completes certification in 2028, taking a measured approach that its CEO says avoids premature automation of highly complex builds. For these players, revenue may be on the horizon — but profits are still nowhere in sight.