News

Wisk Aero Unveils Four-Seat Autonomous Air Taxi

The Boeing-backed startup hopes that with FAA certification, it will soon be able to launch a viable air taxi service.

Published

4 years ago

October 5, 2022

Nour Nasir

Wisk Aero

Wisk Aero may not yet be a household name, but the company has been around since 2019, and has just unveiled its 6th generation aircraft — a small electric 4-seat machine that can fly without any form of human intervention.

The company was originally a joint venture involving Boeing, and the now defunct flying taxi startup Kitty Hawk, initially funded by Google co-founder Larry Page. The Wisk plane is currently seeking FAA approval for passenger testing and will be the first ever electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) plane to receive certification.

Wisk’s latest design is unusual, featuring 6 five-bladed front rotors that can be tilted horizontally or vertically and the same arrangement at the rear (albeit two-bladed and fixed vertically). The plane has a cruising speed of 120 knots, combined with a 90-mile (140KM) range, and flies at a low altitude of 2.5 to 4 thousand feet.

So what does the future hold for Wisk’s autonomous air taxi? Eventually, the company hopes that clients will be able to hail the aircraft via a bespoke app, in a similar manner to an Uber. The plane will take off and land vertically, making it perfect for city applications, where it could easily launch and land from the rooftops of high-rise buildings.

Also Read: Airbus Has Revealed Its CityAirbus NextGen Flying Taxi

Weight remains a big issue for electric aircraft, due to the hefty mass of the batteries that need to be carried. Aviation fuel has a far better power-to-weight ratio than even the most modern lithium-ion batteries, so it remains tricky to make aircraft like Wisk’s viable. Wisk Aero has made encouraging progress so far and maintains the ambitious goal of carrying out 14 million taxi journeys in 20 global markets over the next five years.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.