BUILDING THE GROUND SIDE BEFORE THE AIRCRAFT IS CERTIFIED

Atoms and Joby Aviation have announced a strategic partnership to acquire and develop vertiport sites in the United States, initially focusing on Florida, New York and Texas — the markets in which Joby is preparing to launch early operations under the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program — together with California. Atoms Real Estate builds what the company describes as smart city infrastructure: power-intensive, complex deployments delivered by in-house architects, engineers, technology and construction teams.

The rationale the two companies set out is a sequencing argument. Joby has flown its first FAA-conforming aircraft and entered the final stage of FAA type certification, with piloted flights across the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City demonstrating operational capability. As air taxis move from certification toward early operations, the companies argue, the constraint shifts to the ground: aircraft will need places to land, charge and connect passengers to the rest of their journey, and building that infrastructure rapidly, in the right locations and at scale is expected to be the critical path. JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and Chief Executive of Joby, said thoughtful urban planning could take a decade or more, and that making electric flight part of everyday life would require a new generation of transportation hubs connecting aircraft, ground transportation and communities.

VERTIPORTS CONCEIVED AS MULTIMODAL HUBS

The partnership frames vertiports not as landing pads but as next-generation transportation hubs where electric aircraft, autonomous ground vehicles and ridesharing services converge, anchored by on-site power for charging and operations, and enabling passenger connections, aircraft servicing and last-mile ground transportation. The on-site power element is the least visible and arguably most demanding component: charging an eVTOL fleet at commercial frequency requires grid capacity of a scale that constrains site selection independently of the aviation considerations, and is the reason infrastructure of this type is described as power-intensive.

Travis Kalanick, Founder and Chief Executive of Atoms, said smart cities required innovative real estate and infrastructure development, and that as new transport modes and smart city services became available, designing and deploying a new asset class to support them was critical. He said the company was focused on serving city stakeholders with efficient buildouts delivering good experiences for residents and communities. Bevirt described Atoms as having a vision of building ambitious infrastructure projects combining technology, operations and customer experience, making the company a natural partner for Joby.

CONTEXT: THE EIPP AND JOBY’S WIDER POSITIONING

The eVTOL Integration Pilot Program under which Joby is preparing early operations was established under the Unleashing Drone Dominance Executive Order, with the Department of Transportation announcing the selection of eight projects across 26 states in March 2026 covering urban air taxi services, emergency medical response and cargo logistics. The programme is the mechanism through which the FAA is gathering operational data to inform procedures, training and airspace integration frameworks ahead of routine commercial service. The Atoms partnership follows Joby’s announcement in July of a definitive multi-year agreement with Virgin Atlantic covering UK air taxi services, and its manufacturing joint venture with Toyota announced in June — a sequence indicating parallel development of manufacturing capacity, commercial distribution and now ground infrastructure ahead of type certification.