Joby partners with Atoms to build out a national vertiport network

Joby Aviation has partnered with Atoms to acquire and develop the vertiport sites its aircraft will need. Atoms is an industrial AI and smart city infrastructure company founded by Travis Kalanick, and the parent of CloudKitchens, Otter, Picnic, Lab37, ProFood and Pronto. It carries its own architects, engineers and construction teams, which is rather the point: building landing infrastructure is a property and construction problem more than an aviation one. The intent is to treat vertiports as transport hubs rather than landing pads, combining electric aircraft with autonomous vehicles, ridesharing, aircraft servicing and last-mile transport. Initial states are Florida, New York, Texas and California, chosen where Joby operates under the federal eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. Neither company has disclosed investment figures or a site count. Joby is pursuing FAA type certification, with US operations possible from 2026. For a Santa Cruz company, this is the unglamorous half of the problem being solved in public. An aircraft is useless without somewhere to land it, and solving that turns out to need a construction partner rather than more engineering. Reported by Santa Cruz Works. Read the original: https://www.santacruzworks.org/news/atoms-and-joby-team-up-to-build-out-americas-vertiport-network