Drone delivery pioneer Zipline raises $600 million as it ramps up US expansion

Zipline, by some metrics the world’s largest drone delivery firm, announced, on January 21, 2026, that it has raised $600 million from private investors, in order to fuel its continued expansion into at least four US states.  

The terms of this latest funding round, in which institutional investors such as Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners and Tiger Global have taken part, set the valuation of the drone logistics firm at $7.6 billion. 

Zipline is a pioneer in autonomous logistics by air, providing last mile delivery services by drone in several US metropolitan areas, as well as internationally. In countries like Rwanda, for example, Zipline has been operating for years a service to deliver blood and medical supplies to hospitals. 

In the US, the scope of Zipline’s operation is broader, and in addition to medical supplies it also includes the nearly immediate delivery of food and shopping orders for consumers. The median delivery time for an order in the US is about 3 minutes, according to the company. 

The freshly raised funds will be used to further Zipline’s expansion in the United States, with Houston and Phoenix being the next two focus cities where Zipline will roll out its services. 

In the press release announcing the company’s plans, Keller Cliffton, Zipline’s CEO and co-founder stated that he has he sees 2026 as a pivotal year in which autonomous drone delivery will become a mainstream technology: 

“In 2026 autonomous logistics will become an everyday staple for people across several states in the U.S. That transformation starts with Houston and my home town of Phoenix, which we’ll begin serving early this year, and then expand to even more places across the country throughout the year.” he stated. 

To highlight this point, Zipline shared the fact that it has already reached the two million delivery milestone, with some other indicators pointing towards an acceleration of the rate of adoption of this new modality of logistics. 

In the third quarter of 2025, for example, Zipline reached its own delivery goals 6 weeks early, and it also overshot its daily delivery goal by 30%, with no signs of this trend abating.  

The company pointed out that it is now seeing 15% week-on-week growth. While it took 10 weeks to reach 100 deliveries when it first started offering its services in an urban area, in Dallas, Texas, it now takes about two days to hit this number when entering a new market. 

Founded in 2014, Zipline has so far kept its first mover advantage in a market which has attracted the attention of some pretty large competitors. These include Amazon and Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, which has a drone delivery partnership in place with retail giant Wal Mart.

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