Zipline has raised $1.5bn in fresh equity at a $21.5bn post-money valuation, the drone delivery company said on Thursday, as it accelerates a US expansion that is being financed on a track deliberately separated from its long-established African business.
The round was led by Paradigm, WCM Investment Management and Layer Global, with participation from Uber, Fidelity Management & Research, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest, Salesforce Ventures and Valor Equity Partners. The valuation nearly triples the $7.6bn mark Zipline set in January 2026.
The South San Francisco-based company said the capital will be used to expand its US manufacturing facilities and ramp hiring as it builds a nationwide drone delivery network. None of the $1.5bn is earmarked for Africa, according to the announcement.
The raise coincides with a significant expansion of Zipline’s partnership with Walmart. The retailer will add 300 new Zipline drone delivery sites under a multi-year agreement, a substantial jump from the 21 active sites the two companies currently operate together. Walmart, which has completed more than 2mn drone deliveries to date, said 90 per cent of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores, giving it a structural advantage in building out the network.
Uber, already an investor, is targeting 1mn Zipline deliveries per day by the end of 2029, with drone delivery set to launch on Uber Eats in existing Zipline markets before expanding into dozens of US cities.
The African business funded on a separate track
The ring-fencing of the equity for the US does not signal a retreat from Africa, where Zipline began operations in 2016 delivering blood in Rwanda. The company’s Africa business is now cash-flow positive and “growing faster than ever,” according to CEO Keller Cliffton. Zipline serves thousands of hospitals and health facilities daily across the continent, and in October signed a national-scale public-private partnership in Côte d’Ivoire to build ten additional distribution centres covering 12mn people.
The African expansion is being financed primarily through a $150mn pay-for-performance award from the US State Department, announced in November 2025, which covers upfront infrastructure costs for up to 15,000 health facilities across Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda. Participating African governments are expected to co-finance the programme through multi-year service contracts, a structure designed to make the network self-sustaining without relying on new equity.
The latest equity capital is underwriting the high-capex US land grab, while non-dilutive government and contract financing sustains the African public-health network. Africa remains central to Zipline’s operating history and mission, but the financial architecture now treats it as a contract-financed operation rather than the primary destination for growth equity.
US economics show promise, but remain company-selected
Zipline’s US pitch rests on speed and incremental demand. In October, the median Zipline order arrived 19 minutes after checkout, compared with more than 30 minutes for traditional delivery, according to company figures. A cohort of its longest-tenured restaurant partners reported that Zipline’s share of their delivery revenue rose from 10.8 per cent to 34.9 per cent between March and October, with overall delivery gross merchandise value up 26 per cent and 80 per cent of that increase coming from Zipline orders.
More than 1mn deliveries were completed in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone in 2026. Zipline’s consumer pricing in Texas includes a $0.99 delivery fee plus a service fee capped at $6, and the company argues that a flight can cost about $1 at scale, against McKinsey’s $9–$11 estimate for ground delivery.
Those figures are company-provided and cover a selected cohort of established partners, not the entire network. Per-delivery costs have not been publicly disclosed, and the economics of scaling across 300 new Walmart sites remain unproven.
Regulatory uncertainty and local opposition persist
The expansion faces material non-commercial hurdles. Zipline holds a Part 135 air carrier certificate and has secured beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) permissions that allow it to operate commercially. But the FAA’s broader BVLOS rulemaking, known as Part 108, has missed its statutory deadline. Executive Order 14307 gave the FAA 240 days to finalise the rule; that deadline passed on February 1, 2026, and the text has remained in White House review. The Department of Transportation has called the delay deliberate, arguing it is better to avoid writing current technology into a decade-long rule, while operators say the uncertainty freezes investment.
Local land-use disputes add a further layer of risk. In Westborough, Massachusetts, residents and officials challenged Amazon’s proposed drone facility over noise, zoning and environmental concerns, prompting the company to withdraw its application in late October. The episode illustrates that FAA approval does not guarantee local consent, and municipal planning processes can still determine where drone hubs are sited.
A crowded field and a valuation that demands execution
Zipline is the largest operator by volume, with more than 2mn commercial deliveries and 150mn autonomous miles flown without a major safety incident. But the competitive field is crowding. Wing, the Alphabet spin-out, is Walmart’s nationwide build partner and is under contract to fly from more than 270 stores by 2027. Amazon Prime Air flew from 11 US sites as of August 2026 and says it will reach nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of the year. Flytrex operates across Dallas-Fort Worth, and Matternet focuses on medical logistics. Walmart’s earlier partnership with DroneUp ended after the operator struggled to meet expectations, a cautionary precedent for the sector’s economics.
“Zipline is now one of the largest autonomous robotics companies in the world — operating with scale, safety, and a magical user experience,” said Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm. Alan Tu, portfolio manager at WCM Investment Management, described the technology as “a generational improvement in user experience and delight” within e-commerce and food delivery.
The valuation nonetheless embeds a demanding set of assumptions: that Zipline can convert a selected cohort’s revenue-share gains into durable unit economics across hundreds of new sites, that Uber’s one-million-daily-delivery target is achievable within three years, and that the regulatory environment will eventually shift from waiver-by-waiver permissions to a predictable national framework. Thursday’s raise gives Zipline the capital to pursue that outcome. It does not guarantee the outcome itself.