We Ordered A Zipline Drone Delivery. Here's Our Thoughts

A couple weeks ago, my colleagues Joseph and Vika were in Dallas and they ordered a drone delivery from Walmart and in about 30 minutes.

It's here. That was by far the coolest thing I've ever seen.

That was very cool.

Here's our little unboxing. [laughter]

Perfect time cuz it's very hot out here now.

This was all made possible by Zipline.

Zipline got its start delivering blood supplies in Africa. journeys that would have taken multiple hours by motorbike and are now condensed to 30 minutes or less. It's a critical life-saving

less. It's a critical life-saving technology. They've um proven that they

technology. They've um proven that they can reduce the inhosp maternal mortality rate by over 50%. Africa was a very smart market to launch in because the regulatory environment at the time was

more friendly. Um the much larger

more friendly. Um the much larger opportunity available to zipline is to launch uh in the consumer [music] delivery space in western markets. Uh

this is where we have companies like Door Dash that are currently offering delivery for if you look at the average meal price on Door Dash. It's about $30

allin with delivery, but actually half of that is fees, markups, and other delivery items. So call it all in about $15 uh per delivery on average. We think

that drones can reduce delivery prices to a dollar or less at scale. In

reality, even reducing them to $5 uh would be a pretty meaningful impact compared to today's app delivery prices.

Zipline just partnered with Uber and uh they plan to deliver 1 million drone deliveries per day by 2029. So they have that we're really just at the cusp of an

inflection point here in the um consumer appbased delivery market for Zipline. Uh

which we think is the largest opportunity ahead. Autonomous logistics

opportunity ahead. Autonomous logistics in general we think are roughly a $480 billion opportunity in 2030. And of that

480, about 160 could be attributable to last mile deliveries that could be completed by drones or rolling robots.

Um so we're very excited to see drone delivery beginning to scale here in the US. Um again, Zipline first proving

US. Um again, Zipline first proving success in Africa. They've completed

over 2 million deliveries to date. So

Varika and Joseph experienced drone delivery in Dallas. We'd expect with Uber and other partners that Zipline is able to expand to many more states and cities with drone delivery. So hopefully

someday soon you'll have drone delivery available near you if you don't already.

If you want to learn more about autonomous delivery, check out our big ideas report. Uh look at our research on

ideas report. Uh look at our research on X and go to arc-invest.com.