Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, maybe you’ve dreamt of a world where you could simply fly over the gridlock.

Investors, startups, and aviation bigwigs have all put billions of dollars toward making that vision a reality with electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) ventures. Five of these companies have gone public via SPAC in the last 18 months, with valuations ranging from ~$2 billion to more than $6 billion.

Zoom in: United Airlines is one of the many major carriers betting big on electric air taxis. The company has been an investor in California-based Archer Aviation since the startup was preparing to go public via SPAC in 2021 and also reached a $1 billion deal to buy Archer’s eVTOLs, with the option to purchase an additional $500 million of aircraft.

• In August, it put down the first $10 million toward that order, and in September, United agreed to buy 200 eVTOL aircraft from Eve Air Mobility.

Mike Leskinen, president of United Airlines Ventures, and Archer CEO and founder Adam Goldstein both told us that the near-term use case of eVTOLs is replacing helicopters and serving as a way to get from an urban center to an airport faster.

“It’s about making our airline the airline that customers choose to fly,” Leskinen said. “A) We want to innovate. And we want to provide that to our customers first B) We have the footprint—the geographic footprint—that makes us the right player C) It decarbonizes that trip to the airport. This is not taking regional aircraft out of the skies, but it is taking cars off the road, many of which will be burning gasoline,” he added.

Read more about United’s eVTOL strategy here.—GD

Cybersecurity insurance questionnaires—a way for the insurer to understand a prospect’s defenses—used to be brief.

Do you have AV? Do you have a firewall?

Just a few years ago, answering “yes” to those two questions put you pretty firmly on a path to getting cyber-covered, said Jason Rebholz, CISO at Corvus Insurance.

Now, with the costly stakes of ransomware and business email compromise (BEC), insurers need extra pages to confirm security controls. The longer questionnaires suggest that insurers want a deeper understanding of an organization’s defenses against attacks that could literally cost millions.

“If you’re in the higher end of the SMB market, certainly in the midmarket and in the larger organizations, you’re looking at a minimum of 25 to 50 detailed questions,” Rebholz told IT Brew.

Keep reading about the increasing number of cyber hoops CIOs have to jump through.—BH

As summer Fridays fade into sweet memories and pumpkin spice begins to permeate the air, Q3 ends and Q4 begins. And that, dear reader, is where we find ourselves today, in the last edition of this newsletter for the quarter.

Before we head on into the last quarter of 2022, let’s take a quick look back at our most popular articles across Q3:

From infant poop to trance music, here’s a play-by-play of a CRISPR experiment. Scientists in CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna’s lab pulled back the veil on their gene-editing process.

Jake Paul’s VC fund is backing a startup building…attack drones and the virtual border wall. We talked to the YouTuber-turned-boxer about his investment in Anduril and his fund’s overall strategy.

This brain-computer interface company just hit a major milestone in the US. In July, Synchron worked with Mount Sinai to implant its device into a patient—the first in the US.

Sodium-based batteries could solve the lithium crunch. These batteries could become a viable, cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries—but it may take a few years.

How synthetic biology startups plan to revolutionize fertilizer production. Chemical fertilizer is bad for the environment and becoming increasingly expensive—can biotech help?

Stat: Amazon claims that nearly one-third (30%) of smart-home interactions with Alexa happen without people needing to say anything to the virtual assistant. ICYMI, we wrote about the company’s push to make Alexa figure more stuff out for itself in June.

Quote: “The cars that you’re going to see in 2026 are getting finalized right now. So you have to be way ahead of the game to make the security controls and fixes and mitigations and strategies that you want way more in advance than you would, say, in the software world.”—Chris Valasek, director of product security at the GM-owned self-driving car company Cruise, to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: How companies stopped worrying and learned to love AI.

Learn: Got a case of meeting overload? We know the feeling. That’s why we created a time management master class that can help you prioritize, perform, and get sh*t done without the extra meetings. Sign up now.

Think like a CFO: Instead of panicking about what may or may not happen in the market, read Oracle NetSuite’s 7-step guide to fortifying your business against recessions and economic downturns. Get it here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen will play a game of blockchain-based chess to settle cheating allegations.
• James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, will be replaced by AI.
• DoorDash is using AI-powered robotic security guards to patrol and secure its office.
• OpenAI got rid of the DALL-E waitlist, opening the image generator up to the masses.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Cars are now computers—and the auto industry’s cyber defenses may not be ready
• Why self-driving car company Cruise is bringing chip design in-house
• Why Revel sees an opportunity in selling energy back to NYC’s grid