Zipline raises $250M to scale drone delivery services

Zipline, a leading provider of drone delivery services, has raised $250 million in funding. The company said this raises its valuation to $2.75 billion. Zipline said the funding will help further develop its integrated drone delivery service and fuel expansion into new industries and locations. Zipline has raised more than $480 million since it was founded in 2011.

New investors Fidelity, Intercorp, Emerging Capital Partners and Reinvent Capital participated in the round alongside existing investors including Baillie Gifford, Temasek, and Katalyst Ventures.

Zipline designs, manufactures and operates the world’s largest automated on-demand drone delivery service. The company said Zipline hubs around the world deliver hundreds of shipments to thousands of delivery points every day.

Zipline is perhaps best known for its operations in Ghana. Zipline Ghana is a central part of the Ghanian medical supply chain, operating four distribution centers serving 2,000 health facilities with routine medical supplies and emergency blood and essential medicines. Zipline Ghana can service 24 million people, or 90% of the country’s population.

Zipline has also recently signed new partnerships with Nigeria’s Kaduna and Cross River States to deliver medical supplies, including vaccines, blood and medicines. It entered the Japanese market through a partnership with Toyota Group, expanded its service hours in Rwanda and announced a partnership with Walmart to bring on-demand delivery of health and wellness products to the U.S.

“At Zipline, our mission is to create the first logistics company that serves all humans equally. Around the world, our partners are reimagining how patients access care with fast, reliable on-demand delivery,” said Keller Rinaudo, founder and CEO at Zipline. “Together, we have completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries of blood, medicines and vaccines, and today Zipline makes a commercial delivery every four minutes. In the past year, we have seen major growth in every market, including the U.S., and we’re continuing to build on our proven track record and technology to bring instant logistics to more partners, communities and people.”

Zipline said it surpassed ten million autonomous miles flown, two million vaccine doses distributed and 150,000 commercial deliveries completed.

“Zipline’s delivery service has transformed national health systems and expanded access to care for millions of people,” said Tom Slater, head of US equities team at Baillie Gifford. “With Zipline, we can imagine a world in which anyone could have access to anything in a matter of minutes. The team has created the first automated logistics infrastructure that can support instant delivery at scale and is now rapidly expanding to serve more people and tap into the surging demand for the service around the world.”