Boeing subsidiary WiskAero has acquired Velocell, a software verification and validation company that has been serving the aerospace industry for 25 years.
Wisk is taking an autonomy-first approach to electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft: The company's sixth-generation aircraft, which is set to begin aerial testing later this year, is designed for human oversight but will not be physically piloted by humans.
This means that Wisk, more than any other company building eVTOL vehicles, needs to ensure that its software is up to par.
“There's a ton of high-integrity software in the aircraft and everywhere on the ground that needs to be validated,” Wisk Aero CEO Brian Yutko told TechCrunch. Ensuring that high-integrity software works as expected is important because any malfunctions could cause serious damage, with potentially life-threatening consequences. “There's a lot of validation that needs to be done, and the scope of work is very large, so the Veracel team is going to provide their expertise and make sure that all of the software that we build on board is up to the standards that we expect.”
Wisk will absorb a Verocel team of about 60 people with deep expertise in DO-178C, the standard that provides development guidelines for safety-critical software for aircraft systems.
DO-178C certification is one component of the Federal Aviation Administration's type certification process, which certifies that an aircraft meets all design and safety standards. Wisk said Verocel's expertise will not only help with the certification of the company's sixth-generation aircraft, but also aid in Boeing's future software development.
To facilitate the certification process, Verocel offers a toolset called VeroTrace that helps track and manage the software development and validation lifecycle through to regulatory approval.
Neither Wisk nor Velocel disclosed financial terms of the deal.
The deal is reminiscent of competitor Joby Aviation's acquisition of aerospace software engineering company Avionyx in 2022. In both acquisitions, Wisk and Joby were focused on strengthening vertical integration while also gaining the expertise needed to test and validate software and accelerate the path to federal certification.
Testing and validating all of Wisk's software is part of building and operating autonomous aircraft safely, Yutko said, and Wisk aims to commercialize autonomous eVTOL aircraft by 2030.
The company is already working on developing infrastructure to operate air taxis. In February, Wisk partnered with the city of Sugar Land, near Houston, to identify and evaluate locations at the city's regional airport for vertical takeoff and landing field infrastructure for future air taxi operations. Earlier this month, Wisk signed a memorandum of understanding with Houston Airport to explore locations for vertical takeoff and landing field infrastructure that could help serve the greater Houston metropolitan area.