Zipline Drone Delivery Raises USD330 Million, gains USD4.2 Billion Valuation

The aston­ish­ing suc­cess sto­ry of med­ical drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny Zipline con­tin­ues, where the leader of this indus­try has not only recent­ly raised a whop­ping USD330 mil­lion invest­ment, but gained a USD4.2 bil­lion val­u­a­tion. This is way beyond any of the company’s rivals.

A spokesper­son for the U.S Bay Area-based com­pa­ny explained, “We recent­ly closed our Series F fund­ing round at an increased val­u­a­tion, which involved sev­er­al new and exist­ing investors. We are well cap­i­talised to con­tin­ue to grow our oper­a­tions, includ­ing launch­ing our new home deliv­ery ser­vice. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to build the world’s first logis­tics sys­tem that serves all humans equal­ly and brings faster and more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly deliv­ery to any­one, any­where.”

First report­ed by forbes.com, Zipline’s Series F raise brings its total fund­ing to around USD821 mil­lion. The firm’s cur­rent back­ers include Sequoia Cap­i­tal, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ven­tures, Kat­a­lyst Ven­tures and an array of oth­ers.

Zipline Unveils NextGen Autonomous Drone Plat­form, “Very Qui­et, Very Pre­cise”

Andy Wheel­er, gen­er­al part­ner at Google Ven­tures, told flyingmag.com, “We look at Zipline as the future of robot­ics. We believe it’s pret­ty clear that there is going to be a mas­sive trans­for­ma­tion in instant deliv­ery over the next 10 years towards automa­tion and zero emis­sion logis­tics. Zipline is at the fore­front of that rev­o­lu­tion and is poised to lead.”

Cit­ing an April 10th fil­ing in Delaware, cor­rob­o­rat­ed by two sources, Forbes report­ed that Zipline’s lat­est fund­ing round, which end­ed on April 28th, priced the company’s stock at USD40.20 per share cre­at­ing the val­u­a­tion of USD4.2 bil­lion. A 55 per­cent increase over its pre­vi­ous val­ue.

The tim­ing of Zipline’s raise may not be a coin­ci­dence. It comes just over a month after the com­pa­ny announced its “game-chang­ing” next-gen­er­a­tion deliv­ery sys­tem, named P2, which makes use of unique small deliv­ery “droids” that are sep­a­rate, yet an impor­tant part of the drone.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Zipline’s drones also called “Zips”, float their pay­load to the ground using a para­chute, but the game-chang­ing P2 sees the Zip low­er a small droid, which can autonomous­ly ori­ent itself in the air, on a teth­er. This allows the com­pa­ny to deliv­er to tight­ly defined or hard-to-reach drop-off loca­tions. For exam­ple, a dri­ve-thru win­dow or chute, where the droid can dock on to a sled and slide into a build­ing to col­lect orders and back out to be picked up by a hov­er­ing Zip (please read attached arti­cles). The sys­tem also includes a dual-use charg­ing and dock­ing sta­tion.

Watch Video: The Zipline “Game-Chang­er!”

The P2 Zips have a max­i­mum pay­load of eight pounds and a max­i­mum range of 24 miles, capa­ble of com­plet­ing a 10-mile deliv­ery in 10 min­utes. The drones are able to land and charge at any dock in the net­work, effec­tive­ly extend­ing that 24-mile range.

Dur­ing this year the com­pa­ny aims to con­duct around 10,000 test flights with 100 craft before rolling P2 out to cus­tomers. At present, there are no updates on when these test flights will begin. Mean­while, Zipline’s array of busi­ness part­ners are wait­ing with bat­ed breath.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.flyzipline.com

(images: Zipline)