Zipline raises $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion valuation as Walmart adds 300 drone delivery sites

Zipline, the California company that delivers goods by autonomous drone, said on 5 November 2026 that it has raised $1.5 billion at a post-money valuation of $21.5 billion. The same day, Walmart signed a national multi-year agreement to open 300 more Zipline delivery sites. The two now run 21 sites together, in Texas and Arkansas, and the release names neither the states nor a date for the first of the new ones.

“Walmart’s stores put us close to the communities we serve”

Greg Cathey, senior vice president, eCommerce Fulfillment Transformation, Walmart, to Supply Chain Dive · supplychaindive.com ↗

Paradigm, WCM Investment Management and Layer Global led the round. Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Uber, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest and Salesforce Ventures also took part. The valuation is 2.8 times the $7.6 billion set in January, when Zipline raised more than $600 million and added a $200 million extension in March, and it tops the $20 billion Bloomberg had reported in September. The money is meant for US aircraft manufacturing and hiring, to build a nationwide delivery network. Zipline's factory near San Francisco airport can reportedly build up to 20,000 aircraft a year.

The company puts its record at 150 million commercial autonomous miles without a safety incident, up from 135 million in July. It says it made more than a million deliveries in Dallas-Fort Worth this year, and that the median October order arrived 19 minutes after checkout. Restaurant partners that have stayed longest saw Zipline's share of their delivery revenue climb from 10.8% in March to 34.9% in October, though Zipline chose that group and has not said how large it is. Its Platform 2 home aircraft carries up to 8 pounds within 10 miles, hovering about 330 feet up and lowering the order in a pod on a tether, while Platform 1 flies 120-mile round trips.

For Walmart, the point is reach: stores close to customers let it offer fast delivery to more of them. Its drone programme, shared between Zipline and Wing, covered 66 stores in four states in May, so 300 sites would be more than four times that, and it has passed 2 million deliveries. Uber, an investor, is aiming for one million Zipline deliveries a day by the end of 2029. Paradigm's Matt Huang described Zipline as among the largest autonomous robotics companies in the world.

Zipline began in 2014 flying blood supplies in Rwanda, then moved into Ghana and Nigeria, before its first US operation in 2020 and the Walmart deal in 2021. The regulatory picture is still open. The FAA's Part 108 rule on routine flights beyond the pilot's line of sight was waiting at the White House regulatory office on 5 November, with an FAA official hoping for publication by year-end, and a Texas environmental assessment on raising the cap from 30,000 to 220,000 daily deliveries has closed for comment. Two Zipline drones also came down on parachutes in Texas this summer, with nobody hurt.