Walmart and Zipline said Thursday they will expand their drone delivery partnership, with Zipline operating from 300 additional Walmart stores. Zipline also closed a $1.5 billion funding round that values the company at $21.5 billion.
The capital goes toward US manufacturing capacity and hiring. Zipline, the world's largest drone delivery provider by miles flown, holds Part 135 air carrier certification and is cleared to fly beyond the pilot's visual line of sight. Its drones hover at about 330 feet while a pod carrying the order descends on a tether, a design meant to keep neighborhood noise down.
Walmart did not give a timeline or a list of markets for the 300 new sites. It currently uses Zipline at 21 locations and also works with Alphabet's Wing, which launched delivery at five Central Florida stores in July. Earlier rollouts covered Houston, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth. The partners aim to serve more than 270 stores across nearly 20 metro areas by 2027, including Seattle and Denver.
Walmart says it has completed more than 2 million drone deliveries since starting with Zipline in 2021. US e-commerce sales rose 24% in the second quarter, with store-fulfilled deliveries up 43%. The retailer notes that 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of a store.
Competitors are moving too. Amazon plans to bring Prime Air drone delivery to nearly 500 US communities by year's end, covering about 30 million people, up from a dozen locations. Uber is targeting 1 million daily deliveries via Zipline by 2029.
For Chinese sellers shipping to the US, this network does not connect directly. Drones move instant-consumption goods off local store shelves, a separate system from cross-border first-mile and overseas warehouse replenishment. But it signals that US retailers are pushing the definition of fast from next-day to minutes, which means faster store inventory turns and more frequent replenishment. Sellers using US warehouses should track store-level sell-through rather than stockpiling by quarter.