Zipline Drone Delivery Hits 1M Delivery Mark, Expands Services

Autonomous drone delivery company Zipline announced it has completed 1 million commercial drone deliveries to customers, becoming the first company to do so.

The company also announced that it is expanding its deliveries in the U.S. to include Panera Bread, Memorial Hermann Health System and Jet’s Pizza in Seattle, Houston and Detroit. 

Since its inception, Zipline's emission-free autonomous drones have flown more than 70 million commercial miles across four continents and successfully delivered more than 10 million products.

Seventy percent of those deliveries have been in the past two years as the company expanded to include Walmart retail deliveries and agriculture, animal health initiatives throughout Africa, and food delivery in Japan. 

Zipline says fresh produce is the most commonly delivered item in the U.S. while internationally, child nutrition and vaccines top the list.

“Over the past decade, we’ve worked hard to build a system that scaled to 1 million paid customer deliveries,” said Ryan Oksenhorn, co-founder of Zipline and head of software. “In the near future, I believe that 1 million deliveries will be unremarkable as we reach a million deliveries in a year, in a month, in a day. Ten years from now, I think clean, reliable autonomous delivery of goods and services will be available to everyone.”

Related:FAA Approves Zipline Drones for Long-Distance Deliveries

The company continues to scale across the U.S. after receiving Federal Aviation Administration approval for beyond-line-of-sight deliveries last fall. 

In December the company announced it teamed with U.K.-based health care logistics company Apian to expand medical supply deliveries to hospitals, doctors’ offices and care centers.

In the coming months, Zipline says it plans to roll out its P2 drone to serve more than 30 million in 10 states, partnering with companies for drone deliveries.

These companies include Flynn Group which will use Zipline to deliver from select Panera Bread locations in greater Seattle. Memorial Hermann Health System in Texas will use Zipline for prescription and medical device deliveries to patients’ homes and for transporting medicine, medical products and lab samples between facilities.

Jet’s Pizza, which has more than 400 locations in 22 states will use Zipline drones to deliver orders first in the Detroit area, before further expansion.