Zipline, a drone delivery company, and Uber Technologies have announced a strategic partnership aimed at scaling drone delivery across the United States. The first deployments are expected to begin later this year, giving Uber Eats customers in select areas the option to receive their orders within minutes via Zipline's autonomous drones.
As part of the deal, Uber will also make a strategic investment in Zipline, and together the two companies are aiming to reach one million drone deliveries per day by the end of 2029.
Zipline currently operates across four continents and completes a delivery roughly every 20 seconds. Over the past decade, the company has built an international logistics network serving more than 5,000 hospitals, which it says saves more than 12,000 lives each year, and has flown more than 135 million autonomous miles in total. The company is now bringing that same technology to the U.S., aiming to deliver items to customers within 5 to 10 minutes. To date, Zipline has completed more than 2.7 million deliveries totaling over 20 million individual items, which the company says has helped reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions while saving customers time.
Uber, meanwhile, describes itself as building the world's most flexible hybrid delivery network, combining human couriers, sidewalk robots, and drones so each delivery can be matched with whichever mode of transportation makes the most sense. This partnership pairs Zipline's quiet, fast, and precise drone delivery capability with Uber's existing reach across millions of Uber Eats customers and hundreds of thousands of small businesses, with the goal of accelerating drone delivery adoption at scale and bringing fast, affordable autonomous delivery to a much larger customer base.
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said Zipline has built impressive technology, and that Uber connects millions of people with local merchants every day, arguing that together the companies are shaping the future of delivery by creating a faster, more sustainable way for people to get what they need. He said Uber is looking forward to expanding this technology into more communities and making autonomous delivery part of everyday life.
Keller Cliffton, co-founder of Zipline, said teleportation is no longer science fiction but is becoming part of everyday life, arguing that every major transportation revolution has changed where people live, how businesses operate, and how economies grow. He said that together with Uber, Zipline is taking the next step toward a world where getting what you need is as fast and effortless as sending a text message, regardless of location.
The announcement frames drones as having the potential to transform delivery broadly by cutting delivery times, costs, and emissions compared to traditional delivery methods, making it possible for everything from dinner to everyday essentials to arrive at someone's door within minutes.
