Photo: Roksenhorn / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0. Zipline drone launching at its California test facility in March 2018. Archive illustration, not a current Walmart delivery or Thursday’s funding event. Resized and cropped; adaptations under the same license.
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Zipline said Thursday it raised $1.5 billion to expand its U.S. drone-delivery network, while Walmart agreed to add 300 delivery sites under a new multi-year arrangement. The financing values Zipline at $21.5 billion after the investment, according to the company.
The round was led by Paradigm, WCM Investment Management and Layer Global. Zipline said it will use the money to expand U.S. manufacturing facilities and hire more workers as it builds a national network for deliveries by automated aircraft.
The $21.5 billion figure is a post-money private-company valuation: it includes the new investment. It is not a quoted stock-market share price.
Walmart expansion is planned, not already open
Walmart and Zipline’s agreement covers 300 additional sites over multiple years, the companies’ relationship expanding beyond its existing footprint. Those are planned additions, not 300 newly operating locations announced Thursday. Zipline’s funding release did not provide a site-by-site opening schedule.
Walmart is the retail partner in that expansion; Zipline supplies the drone-delivery network. For shoppers, the idea is to have orders travel by air rather than entirely by road. The announcement does not mean every Walmart customer can use the service now, and it does not give a date for universal coverage.
Delivery speed is a company-reported measure
Zipline said its median order in October arrived 19 minutes after checkout. That measures its existing service, not a promised delivery time for every future order. The company also said it had made more than one million deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this year.
Those figures offer a view of how the company says customers are already using the network. They do not establish what service will cost at a new location, which products will be eligible there, or when a particular shopper’s address will be covered.
Participants in the financing also included Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Uber, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest and Salesforce Ventures, Zipline said.
The funding and Walmart agreement address different parts of the expansion: capital for manufacturing and hiring, and a retail partnership for additional delivery locations. The next practical test is turning that planned network into operating sites that customers can actually use.
JBizNews Desk | South San Francisco, California
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