A San Francisco startup envisions a future where you order a pair of shoes and a few hours later a drone drops them off at your doorstep. The company also sees drones delivering medicines and food to victims of natural disasters such as floods.
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Zipline is building such a future through a fleet of intelligent drones. The company recently closed a $330 million funding round, bringing it to a $4.2 billion valuation — firmly in unicorn territory.
Investors in the company include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Katalyst Ventures, GV Management Co., Pactolus Ventures, Emerging Capital Partners and Reinvent Capital. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised $821 million total, with the most recent round being their Series F. Given the recent decline in venture capital funding, pulling in a nine-figure check is all the more impressive.
Multiple Mission Capabilities
The company's newest drone delivery technology — Platform 2 — can carry up to 8 pounds and has a 10-mile range. Such capacity makes it suitable for a range of uses, including e-commerce, food delivery, medicine and emergency services.
The firm's P2 Zip drone combines two autonomous vehicles into a unique delivery solution. It combines a powerful unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with another droid vehicle that falls from the UAV via a winch-driven zipline apparatus.
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This vehicle contains its own sensors and a fan to keep it on course and a hatch for the delivery cargo, which is simple for both providers and recipients to load and unload. The UAV part of P2 Zip charges on a tall charging station that resembles a lamp post. The charging stations enable the P2 Zip to perform delivery missions of up to 24 miles, as it can recharge multiple times throughout the journey, similar to an electric vehicle recharging on a long drive.
The company also offers P1, a planelike drone that's built for a longer range and uses a parachute delivery system. It can perform fast high-volume deliveries.
Safety, Convenience And Quiet
To ensure safety for other aircraft and recipients, Zipline has multiple protocols and technologies working together. It uses sensing technology to map a 360-degree view around the drone and can see obstacles up to 1 mile away, whether it is day or night or in challenging weather conditions.
The company uses fleet management software to plot courses and eliminate the risks of collisions. The drones can also communicate with each other to prevent conflicts. They use precision guidance to return to their origin or to make a delivery with accuracy down to the centimeter, which further improves safety and reliability.
The P2 Zip system is exceptionally quiet in flight, so it does not create a buzzing disturbance for residential areas. It is also an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional package delivery methods — a typical delivery truck gets 10 miles or less to the gallon and is a heavy and loud vehicle. With drones, e-commerce providers, pharmacies and other clients can add instant delivery capabilities while reducing road traffic and related noise and air pollution. The company notes a 97% reduction in emissions with its solution compared to traditional delivery.
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The Biggest Drone Delivery System In The World
Zipline operates the world's largest commercial drone system and boasts hundreds of thousands of deliveries since the company's founding in 2014. It plans to complete its 1 millionth delivery by the end of 2023, marking a major milestone for the industry. The company has a pilot partnership with Walmart Inc. for commercial deliveries and is navigating Federal Aviation Administration clearance before developing a nationwide delivery network that will transform the skies.
The company started deliveries in remote parts of Rwanda in 2016. It delivered medicine, vaccines and personal protective equipment to communities in need. The company refined its processes and technology for a few years and then expanded into Ghana, Nigeria, Asia and the U.S. It is now poised for rapid expansion as its drone platform promises to enable deliveries for medical providers, aid organizations, e-commerce firms and others.
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