Analysis: a reference contract without a number attached
The two releases agree on the technical substance and diverge on emphasis, and the gap is the useful part. Airtificial leads with the size of the contract in its own history and with market entry. SkyDrive leads with certification, and its language is precise about what Airtificial is not doing: built-to-print work under AS9100, AS9102, AS9145 and NADCAP is manufacturing to a customer specification, with the design authority and the certification burden sitting with SkyDrive. That distinction matters for how the revenue behaves. Built-to-print volumes follow the customer’s production rate, and SkyDrive’s production rate is a function of an airworthiness certification it does not yet hold, with commercial launch stated for 2028.
Nothing in either disclosure sizes the opportunity. There is no contract value, no term, no delivery schedule and no unit volume beyond around twenty parts per aircraft. Against a 2025 order book of 144 million euros and 2026 awards of 28,8 million euros at the accounts date, a reader cannot place this agreement in either figure. Airtificial filed it as other relevant information rather than as inside information, which under Spanish law is the category for financial or corporate information an issuer considers of sufficient interest to disseminate, not information whose disclosure obligation is triggered by its price sensitivity.
What the contract does establish is qualification. A supplier that already ships structural elements for the A-320 family and around 60.000 composite parts a year has now been accepted into a new customer’s certification path, in a new geography, by a manufacturer whose own production partner is Suzuki. For a company that reported negative EBITDA in 2025 and attributed it partly to slipped awards, a named long-cycle programme is a different kind of asset from a single year’s order intake, even without a euro figure.
The things to watch are mechanical. The first is whether the engineering contracts sale of 18,5 million euros closes in 2026, since Airtificial itself tied its short-term financial obligations to it. The second is whether the SkyDrive work appears as a quantified line in the order book at the next reporting date. The third is SkyDrive’s certification progress with the Japanese and United States civil aviation authorities, because Airtificial’s deliveries under a built-to-print agreement cannot run ahead of it.
What the documents say
Airtificial Intelligence Structures, S.A. (BME: AI) filed a notice of other relevant information with the CNMV on 22 July 2026 announcing that its Aerospace and Defense division had been selected by the Japanese eVTOL developer SkyDrive to industrialise and manufacture the primary and secondary structural parts of its electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. SkyDrive announced the same agreement from the Farnborough International Airshow, dating its release 21 July 2026.
The two disclosures describe the arrangement in different terms. Airtificial calls it one of the largest civil aviation structural parts contracts signed in its 30 years of history and its first with a Japanese final manufacturer. SkyDrive describes a Sales and Purchase Agreement for the manufacturing and supply of lightweight carbon fibre reinforced plastic primary and secondary structural parts and sub-assemblies for its production aircraft, the SKYDRIVE, model SD-05. Neither side put a value or a term on it.
What Airtificial has agreed to build
The work goes to Airtificial’s plant in Jerez, in southern Spain, which will produce around twenty carbon fibre structural pieces for each SkyDrive aircraft. The SD-05 carries one pilot and two passengers. SkyDrive characterises the scope as built-to-print manufacturing, meaning Airtificial builds to the customer’s design rather than developing the parts itself, and says every component must be produced under the AS9100, AS9102, AS9145 and NADCAP aerospace quality standards required for airworthiness certification.
Airtificial says it manufactures about 60.000 composite parts a year for civil and military aircraft and that it supplies structural elements to Airbus, including for the A-320. SkyDrive frames the Spanish contribution as adding a European footprint to its global supply network.
Arnaud Coville, chief technology officer of SkyDrive, said of the Spanish supplier: “Their flexibility and support during the preliminary design stages were extremely helpful and their rapid tooling capabilities have significantly reduced the supply lead time.” Guillermo Fernandez de Penaranda, chief executive of Airtificial Group, called the agreement “another clear validation of our long-term strategy”.
SkyDrive puts its commercial launch in 2028. The company began testing eVTOL prototypes in 2014 and was formally incorporated in 2018. In 2019 it became the first company to perform a crewed eVTOL flight in Japan. It started production of the SKYDRIVE in March 2024 at a plant owned by Suzuki Motor Corporation, its official production partner, and flew the aircraft publicly for the first time at Expo 2025 in Osaka in April 2025. It is headquartered in Toyota, in Aichi prefecture, and led by chief executive Tomohiro Fukuzawa.
The financial position the contract arrives into
Airtificial closed 2025 with revenue of 94,0 million euros, down from 110,1 million euros in 2024, and reported negative EBITDA equal to 4 percent of sales, against a positive 12.013 thousand euros, or 11 percent of sales, in 2024. The operating result swung from 4.839 thousand euros in 2024 to minus 15.850 thousand euros in 2025. The company attributed the deterioration to delayed contract awards, the tariff environment, the depreciation of the dollar and the slowdown of several aeronautics and defence programmes, and said contracts signed in December could not be executed until the first quarter of 2026.
Order intake in 2025 came to 84 million euros and the order book closed the year at 144 million euros. At the date the accounts were drawn up the company put the backlog at 173 million euros and 2026 awards at 28,8 million euros. Airtificial also disclosed a second-half 2025 agreement to sell engineering services contracts for 18,5 million euros, an operation it said would lift operating profit and net profit by more than 11 million euros once executed, after a goodwill impairment of 7,5 million euros, and which had not closed in 2025 because of defence sector administrative procedures running into 2026.
The shares ended 2025 at 0,093 euros against 0,090 euros at the end of 2024, across 1.555.841.159 shares.
The disclosure route
Article 227 of Ley 6/2023, de 17 de marzo, de los Mercados de Valores y de los Servicios de Inversion requires issuers whose securities trade on a regulated market to communicate to the CNMV any remaining financial or corporate information about the issuer or its securities that a legal or regulatory provision obliges them to make public in Spain, or that they consider necessary to disseminate to investors because of its special interest. The CNMV then publishes that information on its own website. Article 228 lets the supervisor set the manner and terms of publication and requires inside information to be flagged as such and presented separately from other issuer communications.
Airtificial routed the SkyDrive announcement through that channel, attaching the press release to a covering letter signed by Fernandez de Penaranda in his capacity as director general.
