I Tried Flying an Air Taxi With Archer’s CEO (Midnight Simulator)

0:00Archer was actually the first sponsor of Sorcery ever. At Archer, we are building next generation of aviation. There was a change in technology where all of a sudden you could use multiple electric engines to fly airplanes. A helicopter will have one big rotor. Instead of having one rotor that takes off and lands vertically, we have multiple sets of engines, multiple sets of propellers that allows you to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but then transition and fly forward like an airplane. Well building airplanes is hard. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money, but it also takes a lot of political support.

0:31We've had to have new laws written. This is the first new category in aviation in 60 years. We were selected as the exclusive air taxi provider for the LA 28 Summer Olympics. And that was a huge, huge deal. Reddit played actually a big part in our ability to not only just go public, but also to build a huge retail following. And so what the Reddit community has done has found like their own way to come together and support these companies in a really unique way. I know it's surprising, but...

0:59There's a draft. Where did this come from? 20 aircrafts times a thousand markets is 20 ,000 aircrafts times$5 million selling prices. A lot of money.

1:18Hi, it's Molly from Sorcery. We're here today at a secret HQ tour of Archer. Let's go in.

1:29you had a crazy year archers raised over four billion dollars you got the new administration to sign an executive order what else is going on well building airplanes is hard and it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of money but it also takes a lot of political support and so we have had the good fortune of an administration that has been extremely supportive to us. And I know a lot of people say that, but it's actually super true in our case. We've had to have new laws written. This is the first new category in aviation in 60 years. And so having not only just the FAA on board, the Department of Transportation on board, even as high as the president who mentioned it in his campaign speech, it's really had to take a lot of people to help us get this done.

2:13And so I'll give you a specific example. we were selected as the exclusive air taxi provider for the la 28 summer olympics and that was a huge huge deal but in order to get from where we are today in 2025 to the olympics in 2028 there's a lot of work that has to get done and so we went to the white house and we spoke with the secretary of transportation we spoke with a lot of the different members and we said we need some kind of plan to help really the industry not just archer but the industry go from concept to flying around into our cities to ultimately scaling into the Olympics. And so we came up with this concept around what they called the EIPP or EVTOL integration pilot program.

2:55And that was to allow these aircrafts to start flying in the cities in the U.S. as soon as next year. And so what they're going to do is they're actually going to pick five cities and they're going to be hopefully big cities. I think actually Los Angeles within Los Angeles will be selected as one of them. Love L.A. L.A. of course. And they're gonna let us start flying in the cities but what it's going to do is really help the confidence side of the industry where it's like the first time you saw Waymo's it was a really big deal yeah probably the first time you ever took away ever taken a Waymo yeah it's quite an awesome experience but kind of the 10th time you've taken a Waymo it's sort of like whatever it's just a part of everyday society so we needed a way for the general public to see these aircrafts and to just become okay with it so it's sort of our Waymo like moment and so five cities will get announced It'll start very conservatively point-to-point flights daytime flights high reserves and allow us to Showcase the technology show the safety and really just kind of tamp the pressure down to the public so that they understand That this is something that is going to be normal in their cities It's something that I think people should expect to see and by the time we get to the Olympics It'll almost be boring and so it won't be this big high-pressure moment for them to get it done.

4:09I I feel like every time I go to Connecticut to visit my family, my dad's like, I wish I just had an Archer to go to the airport with or pick you up or go to the city. OK, so you've been building this company for many, many, many, many years. It's very, very difficult. But in the last year, this new administration has clearly unlocked something that like other administrations have not unlocked for many sectors of tech. So what is that feeling like for you? Like, do you feel like you've kind of hit this new growth trajectory? So the last administration, they created the framework for the industry.

4:45So I do think it's bipartisan in the sense that everybody agrees that America should lead in aviation. So I think that is kind of clear. But actionizing that and putting a plan together for that, the last administration was absent. I literally could not get a meeting with Secretary Pete Buttigieg. I couldn't do it. He just wouldn't take the meeting. And so I don't know if it just wasn't important to him or whatever his reasons were. But as soon as the new administration got into place, as soon as Secretary Duffy was put into place, literally within five weeks, I had a meeting with him. And I've met him probably on a monthly basis ever since then that he's been there.

5:20And there's been executive orders put in place, specific business plans on how to get these aircrafts to market. And so when I say that the administration has been extremely helpful to the industry, you can see the evidence. It's very clear. And so, I mean, I've been to the White House many times. We've been at events at Mar-a-Lago. We've been really all the major agencies have gotten together to come support the industry. And it's not even just an Archer thing. It's an industry thing because they believe in two things. One, reindustrialization of America is critical, meaning manufacturing jobs and building stuff here in the country is important.

5:58And two, America leading in these new cutting-edge technologies. And when you have both of those things at such a high pressure, high stake moment in time where everything is changing, defense industry is changing, civil aviation is changing, it is critical that the government supports that and we've seen that with clear evidence. Before we get too far and I think maybe this audience might not have as much background information as I do. I've interviewed you before at Reindustrialize. Archer was actually the first sponsor of sorcery ever. Thank you very much. It was the biggest deal I've ever signed.

6:43But for people who don't know what Archer is and what air taxis are. Could you explain that? Sure. At Archer, we are building the next generation of aviation. So there was a change in technology where all of a sudden you could use multiple electric engines to fly airplanes. And so a helicopter will have one big rotor. Instead of having one rotor that takes off and lands vertically, we have multiple sets of engines, multiple sets of propellers that allows you to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but then transition and fly forward like an airplane. So it's a combo. It's this new kind of half helicopter, half airplane vehicle.

7:20And it can be used in and around urban environments. So think about flying from Manhattan to JFK, a trip that might take you 60 or 90 minutes on the ground in a car that you could fly in literally five or 10 minutes. And so there's an ability now to create an aircraft that is super safe, similar safety levels as big commercial airliners. It's super affordable because the aircrafts are simple. They don't take the same amount of maintenance a helicopter does. They have such a high safety standard and they can do so many trips in a given day And they're quiet So it gives you ability to really scale this so you can ultimately drive that cost down And it's done in a way that is not disrupted to the environments because the aircrafts are really really quiet So you have a new platform that's that's really it's like day one of that first new category at the FAA in 60 years And it's an opportunity to build a whole next generation of aviation But it doesn't stop there.

8:08And so this gets back to really like, you know, why is the administration so involved in the industry? Well, if you look at what's happening from a defense perspective, you have the whole world shifting from very expensive centralized systems, building these exquisite products to what they call autonomous and attributable or I think autonomy at scale. It's a totally different type of dynamic. And so we are building a whole new generation of aircraft where it's designed to be built at scale. There's a lot of the analysts will tell you they think it's a multi-hundred billion dollar market or a several trillion dollar market.

8:42So the defense industry looked at this and said, well, if you are willing to or interested in building for defense applications and we could think about scaling manufacturing from the very beginning, it's an incredible opportunity to actually help re-industrialize not just the civil aviation part of the manufacturing base, but also the defense manufacturing base. So if you think that during certain surge times, there's an ability to shift capacity from the civil side to the defense side, and in quieter times from the defense side back to the civil side. So if you think about it from that perspective, a start over is a really incredible opportunity to design aircraft that are built to do that.

9:19Well, in China, don't they regulate that every new ship that's built or every boat that's built has to be certified to be able to carry military vehicles on it? There's something like that. Yeah, so in China they have made it mandatory that ships of a certain size have to be strong enough and fortified enough to be able to carry military assets as well as civilian assets. So it gives them the ability to flex back and forth. That on top of the fact that they build so much really gives them this interesting advantage of where we are today. So when you look at the aviation industry by designing it from the beginning, this new category, they call it advanced air mobility or electric aircrafts or hybrid electric aircrafts, we have an ability to actually build for scale from the very beginning with the sort of framework of both civil and defense that can be interchanged, changing parts, similar supply chains, all U.S.

10:17domestic-based, that can allow us to scale when we need it. So you've also had some pretty significant partnerships in the defense area. Can you share more about these? Sure. I love these companies. So our big partner in the defense industry is Andrel. And so Andrel came to us and really understood that the entire defense industry is changing. It's changing from these expensive, centralized, exquisite systems to much more scalable or you know think autonomous systems that are designed to address the future conflicts that are pretty obvious meaning if you can fight an enemy with unmanned systems it's much better from the perspective of cost you can lower the cost you don't need the redundancy in these aircrafts the redundancy in these vehicles the way you would with manned systems you can risk the aircrafts at a much greater degree because there's not a human behind that and you can have an advantage.

11:18But conversely, if the adversary is doing that, you certainly don't want to put a manned asset up against an unmanned asset. And so you saw this new change happen. And first we started to see products happen on the fixed-wing side. So Andruil's project there is called Fury. It is a CCA, or a collaborative combat aircraft, where aircrafts are designed to fly alongside manned aircraft. And now they're starting to explore similar concepts with rotorcraft. So think, you know, the big rotorcraft systems are Blackhawks and Apaches and E-22s and Chinooks. And so how can they complement or even build new products that can fly with or fight with those same type of rotorcraft that can be designed to do the same things, which are similar capabilities or better capabilities at substantially lower cost to address the sort of future conflicts, meaning unmanned and scalable or what they call a tridable aircraft.

12:11mm-hmm sorcery is brought to you by brex the financial stack trusted by more than 30 000 companies including one in three venture-backed startups in the u.s nearly 40 percent of startups bail because they run out of cash brex is literally built to help founders avoid that unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle shipping away at it with fees brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster their all-in-one solution combines checking treasury and FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one.

12:53With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com slash sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. So when we announced we were going public, we were actually 50 people. And it was pretty shocking. It was actually an interesting period of time where all of a sudden hardware companies could be back. This is back in 2021. Before that, really before Tesla, before SpaceX, it was impossible to raise money as a hardware founder. It was impossible.

13:36You just couldn't do it. Everything was software. It was a SaaS, marketplace, whatever, you know, type of product. And so, like, the world changed, and that was, like, unbelievably exciting. To build airplanes, it's extremely expensive. You're not even in the game without a billion dollars, because it takes a huge team for many, many years to really develop core technologies that can be safe, reliable, and ultimately, like, put into production. So when we announced that we were going public, within six weeks, I had the most unbelievable experience where I had three letter agencies coming after me, I had lawsuits, I had pretty much everybody came out of the woodwork to try to take us down.

14:13So when you have an industry that's so heavily consolidated, they don't want new entrants. And so Boeing sued us instantly. We're now friends with them. They're good. They're our friends. But they were ruthless when we started. And there's all these stories, legendary stories about Boeing and competition and all that stuff. And it was like my welcome to the NFL moment. It was like it just got actually like checked like right into the chin. And it was like, you know, welcome to the NFL. And so that was like the big guys coming after us. And then along the way, it's also been really brutal where you've seen the competitors also try to do things to edge you out.

14:53I actually have developed a friendship with Alexis from Reddit. Amazing guy, just absolutely amazing founder. And Reddit played actually a big part in our ability to not only just go public, but also to build a huge retail following. And so retail has been a big part of our story. And so we've had an amazing retail base that's been super supportive. Long-term thinkers, not judging us on quarter to quarter, really seeing what can be possible, really trying to find the next Tesla, trying to find the next SpaceX. And so what the Reddit community has done has found like their own way to come together and support these companies in a really unique way.

15:29And so I really I get a lot of energy from that. I think it's amazing. And so we try to do things to help the public. I think Elon did an amazing job by he I think he was the first one to say, hey, retail can ask questions on the quarterly conference calls or retail can come to the, you know, the big launch events or, you know, retail can be a part of their journey. So we're trying to incorporate a lot of the similar types of dynamics because it's been such a big part of our story. We are a relatively small company. You know, people-wise, we're, you know, 1 ,500 people or so, but even market cap-wise.

15:57But if you look at a volume traded throughout our stock, we will often be a top 10 most heavily traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange. That will happen all the time. That is because of the retail. And the thing that does for us is that is a form of liquidity, meaning we are able to raise a lot of capital. And so when you have a lot of volume going through the stocks, a lot of the investors have the ability to play, meaning they can come in and out of your stock. If you don't have liquidity, there's no way for investors to really acquire your shares or even get out once they do. And so it gives an ability for a company like Archer to actually have a chance to go out there because we can raise the capital and this fan base can follow us and really stay with us for a long period of time.

16:37So super grateful to that community. Super grateful to Alexis for starting credit and helping a lot of startups like Archer get going. I hate to be rude, but we've passed this now almost twice, and I can't help but be distracted by this huge candy wall behind you. What is this? Oh, God. That was an idea from one of the archers to help, let's call it, I think I'm going to say satisfy his ADHD, have him stop smoking. and come over here and constantly go get food. It's dangerous. I've successfully been able to eliminate at least half of the candy and put nuts and dried fruits down there, almost half of it, as you can see.

17:20There also is a Coca-Cola machine here as well. But this is our wall of sin. And so I think it's more of actually when you're having a bad day, you come over and you sugar load and you eat away your sorrows. What's your biggest vice here? For me, I find there was a Barstool Sports phrase, fridge cigarettes like sodas. I think it's funny and it's done such a good job for me of like, I have one diet soda per day. That's like my max. I won't let myself have more than one and I call it a fridge cig because it's a way for me to remind myself to stop doing that, to stop drinking this stuff. But that is my vice.

17:59Okay. All right. I have my eyes on the chocolate covered almonds. Okay, back to the retail market, because I find that so fascinating. I've interviewed a handful of public company CEOs so far this year, and have also interviewed their investors and so on and so forth, whether it's KOTU or it's interviewing Keith Ravoy, who had just joined Open Door at the time. I just interviewed Vlad Tenev. Actually, in the conversation with Vlad, he brought up the point, and we talked about this for a little bit because I saw this with Open Door. It's like people put down going public a lot because, you know, you have to do quarterly filings.

18:42You have to do all these earnings calls. It's more work. You have to get a different team. You have to be super tight on everything. But like, so it seems like something, such an operational burden, but what I'm hearing from you and what I'm hearing from other people is if you're really good at telling your story and you know how to actually like engage the retail community it's probably like one of the best things you could do for your company I was just trying to see if it's gonna be a real question because you hit every name drop like I got Vlad I got Keith I got everybody else like he's cuz I said like Secretary Duffy I was like I don't know if she was well I also got a meal Michael okay there we go there we go no I think going public is is actually a great thing I think it's great thing for the right company at the right period of time for us it was really great because it gave us the ability to tell our story and to evangelize it.

19:30And the sort of love hate ones do really well. Like Kramer has always hated us and just ashes us at every chance he can get. And in a way it just brings more almost like attention to it. And so as long as you're like, you sort of can blow that stuff off and it doesn't bother you. I think it's actually great because we're just telling the stories. What's been pretty amazing is it's made its way because it's so popular on Reddit, it's made its way into the schools and so the kids know about it. And so for me that's actually really exciting because I think the sciences are really important for kids to study and so I think that's great when they start talking about airplanes, aerodynamics, becoming a pilot.

20:09Speaking of, you're gonna have to fly some of the simulators today. We'll see if... So I've actually wanted to become a pilot for like a really long time. I wanted to get my pilot's license. We're gonna test you out today and see if you're any good. I think if I start, I'll start with an Archer license. Okay. I'll get my own, it'll be cool. I'll get the best version possible. Well, we'll gladly have you as a pilot if, that's how you do today. Okay. We'll see if you can fly a plane. We'll see what happens. I'm gonna be so upset if I crash this. Okay. So, left hand on this little cork handle. Okay.

20:46Right hand on a second. Do I put my feet here? You do. And then your hand, right hand there. Okay. So when you start to pull back on that left handle, you're going to get air, you're going to start to get airborne. What's going to happen is the aircraft is going to start to turn. You'll, it'll start to bank. You bank the opposite direction to kind of stabilize it. And when the aircraft starts to spin, like if it starts to spin to the right, step on the left pedal. What? If it spins right. It's dancing. you're dancing keep pulling with your left hand there you go now you're flying wow push stick forward uh-oh no uh-oh am i supposed to be going in a direction like you kind of want to tilt the aircraft down and you'll gain some speed guys i'm not gonna lie i think i'm doing a great job to lower your power.

21:41The left hand, push it down a little bit. And I landed. All right. Good job. Great. Come on out. We'll help you try to fly Vindad now. I'm not going to tell you. You're just going to sit and you're going to try this one out. This airplane is much easier to fly. You'll understand the difference of having a fly-by-wire system where the computers are doing everything versus in that machine you are trying to do everything.

22:15This is the midnight simulator, so why don't you come on up and hop on it. Okay, so with your right hand, pull back the difference of the machines. With your left hand, point that to the left. Where is this? This is in Salinas. and you can pull back a little with your right hand too to make it go higher. So you can see as you go faster, the propellers start to tilt down and you start to get into full wing-borne flight. So you can see they've almost fully closed. So this is what we call a fly-by-wire aircraft. So the computers are doing everything. You're doing very little. So now you can really, you're just flying like an airplane.

23:04So really, you know, you can kind of point the direction of the airplane whichever way you want. So turn it to whichever way you want. It really doesn't take, you know, much training at all to get going. Of course, there's a lot of things you'll have to learn how to do operating in the airspace. So you are switched on now flying like an airplane. You can also, you know, switch back and fly, you know, like a helicopter. So you are roughly a thousand feet in the air, you can see here. How do I go faster? You are slowly going faster at about 114 knots now. So you can see the propellers that are spinning on the aircraft.

23:38There are multiple sets of propellers and the ability for electric engines to be scaled really far down gives you an ability to build an aircraft with lots of redundancy. And that's what those multiple sets of engines propellers really represent. The aircrafts are designed to take off and land vertically so you can, you know, it's convenient. you can take off near points of destination and land close to where you want to go. So instead of driving all the way out to an airport, you can, of course, go to a heliport or what we call a vertiport. But they also can take off and land conventionally, so like an airplane.

24:11And that's more of a safety case or an energy-saving mode. So it can do both airplane mode and helicopter mode. I think that's one of the unique features of this aircraft. Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real-world judgment. That's why companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces, the kind of infrastructure Frontier Labs need to train superintelligence. Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. All right, so how was flying the simulators?

24:51Okay, I don't think I'm gonna ever fly a helicopter. That was not very fun. I like being good at things, knowing how to control whatever I'm doing and that was just chaos and I'm never getting into a helicopter now. I'm not just saying that either but it's like everything you do you feel like you're like fighting a force behind it and it's constantly balancing like ten things at once. That's literally what it's doing. Every action has a reaction. You are constantly, you push left, you also have to make sure you're stopping from going right. So it is a very complex machine and it helps give you, I think, respect for helicopter pilots, how talented they are, but also the simplicity of flying an aircraft like Midnight.

25:35Yeah, Midnight was very fun. I think I had too much fun in that. And I don't know why, but when we were walking over, I was like, kind of like easier than driving a boat. But it's like fun because you get to see things. And it gets you where you want to go pretty fast. Yeah. So I want to ask a more personal question. You've been the CEO of a public company for a while. You've gotten the support of the Trump administration. You've raised billions of dollars. What has this process been like for you and how does it feel? Well, when I started Archer, I knew that if we got to a certain point, it would require an incredible amount of capital.

26:13So one is super lucky. I feel super lucky that there's an opportunity to even do this, meaning I was born at a period of time. I started the company at a certain time when energy density of batteries got good enough. The political landscape became favorable for us to do this and ultimately there was enough capital in the markets that were willing to fund this kind of stuff. That's really crazy. It's it's genuinely like the American dream like the ability to do this. I don't think there's another country that you could do something like this in. I mean between the capital markets being favorable, between literally the top political leaders supporting this.