Zipline announced it raised $600 million in a new funding round, valuing the drone delivery company at $7.6 billion, as investors ramp up bets on last-mile autonomous logistics. According to Bloomberg, the round included both new and existing backers, with Zipline naming Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, and Tiger Global among participants.
Zipline, based in San Francisco, has been expanding its commercial deployments in the U.S., delivering products spanning food, retail, and healthcare directly to customers’ homes.
The company has been scaling up quickly. Back in November, Zipline said it will receive up to $150 million to expand its AI and robotics infrastructure that enables African governments to provide 24/7 delivery of essential medical supplies to hospitals and health facilities.
Since the company’s first delivery in 2016, Zipline’s autonomous logistics system has completed more than 1.8 million deliveries. And with Zipline, hospitals, health facilities, and community health workers have on-demand access to a world-class pharmacy from nearly any location.
Before Zipline, CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton worked as a co-founder and executive at Romotive, and he conducted research at Harvard focused on biotech/synthetic-biology. Zipline’s co-founders also include Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, and Will Hetzler. Wyrobek is also the co-founder and co-director of the Personal Robotics Program at Willow Garage, where he helped launch and grow ROS (Robot Operating System), worked on the PR2 robotics platform, and previously helped start the Stanford Personal Robotics Program. Ryan Oksenhorn was a software engineer and product owner at Romotive, where the team built Romo (a smartphone-operated robot). Hetzler started his career as a consultant at Oliver Wyman, focused on the aviation industry, and while at Harvard, he also cofounded and ran the Harvard Bouldering Wall (a student-run climbing gym).
