Joby Aviation builds out defense business with $500M acquisition
- ID
- 13128
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 12 Aug 2026, 12:06 AM
- Fetched
- 12 Aug 2026, 12:31 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/joby-aviation-builds-out-defense-business-with-500m-acquisition/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 2.0
- Created
- 12 Aug 2026, 12:34 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_founders
What happened
Joby Aviation agreed to acquire Ohio-based Resonant Sciences for $500M in cash and stock, creating a dedicated defense division led by Resonant co-founder J. Micah North. Resonant brings $100M in trailing 12-month revenue, RF and sensor systems, and access to classified U.S. government programs, while Joby's defense projects—including turbine-electric and hydrogen-electric aircraft and an autonomy stack—will fold into the new division.
Why it matters
This is a defense-sector M&A story with no direct impact on AI/ML tooling, developer infrastructure, cloud, payments, or startup-building decisions for this audience. The only tangentially relevant detail is Joby's autonomy technology stack, but the article provides no technical specifics to act on.
Discussion angle
Brief mention only: how acquisitions that bring existing revenue ($100M trailing) can fund long-horizon R&D bets like eVTOL certification—a pattern relevant to deep-tech founders, but not actionable for most of the room.