A precision Zipline drone with a delivery pod underneath.
The Zipline
South San Francisco-based Zipline is adding former Tesla and Waymo stalwarts to its C-suite, and bringing in a former Uber executive to lead commercial expansion, as the company scales its drone delivery service to new US and international markets.
Since Zipline began operating nearly a dozen years ago, its fully electric, autonomous drones have been used to make more than 2.5 million commercial deliveries. Drones can carry objects weighing up to 8 kilograms. They have been used to deliver everything from life-saving vaccines, blood and anti-venom doses, to burritos and personalized pizzas. Customers typically order through the Zipline app.
Little Caesars, Chipotle and the Cleveland Clinic are among the US businesses Zipline works with today, along with retail partners such as Walmart and more than 100 small businesses.
Company CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton estimates that Zipline is now making one drone delivery every 20 seconds, up from one per minute in early 2025 when Zipline was ranked No. 46 on CNBC’s annual Disruptor 50 list.
One million of its deliveries to date have been made in the past 12 months, the company said, and about 70% of the daily delivery volume takes place in the US.
That’s a big change from Zipline’s early days when it focused on drone delivery of essential medical supplies and humanitarian aid to clinics and farms in Rwanda and Ghana. Zipline’s business in Africa is also growing, said Rinaudo, as there are development and expansion agreements, some with the help of the US State Department.
Rinaudo Cliffton likes to say that Zipline works to make delivery orders feel as simple as “teleportation.” Its fastest order-to-delivery time was five minutes for some orders in Dallas.
Through the company’s new health care partner, the Cleveland Clinic, Zipline will offer a “home health delivery service” in the Cleveland suburbs this month, allowing patients to receive prescriptions by plane to their homes, at no additional cost to begin with.
Joining the venture-backed startup as its new chief financial officer this month is Tesla’s former vice president of finance, Sendil Palani.
Palani spent nearly 17 years working for Elon Musk’s electric car maker, and told CNBC that he views Zipline as a similar, mission-driven organization with related tasks ranging from precision manufacturing to maintaining charging infrastructure.
Zipline also has the potential to eliminate the traffic and pollution associated with conventional air and ground deliveries, Palani said, while saving lives of people and animals with its rapid delivery, which can be done on roads damaged by severe weather or other disasters.
Today, Zipline has the capacity to make 24,000 drones a year at its factory in South San Francisco. Palani, who started at Tesla when the company made just one, fully electric car per day, sees parallels with the years when Tesla began mass-producing the Model 3 sedan.
(Zipline’s former CFO was another Tesla financial leader, Deepak Ahuja, who still advises on the drone business, and personally recommended Palani to fill his shoes.)
Zipline Center of South San Francisco.
The Zipline
In addition to the new CFO hire, Zipline is bringing in Kevin Vosen as chief legal officer, who joined after working at Ohalo, an agricultural biotech company, and seven years as chief legal officer at Waymo, Alphabet’s private equity business.
Strengthening its leadership team should help Zipline expand its services across the U.S., Rinaudo said, after gaining traction in the first major metro area of Dallas, Texas, last year.
The startup also hired Allen Penn as head of commercial and marketing. Penn previously served as vice president of Uber Eats, and helped build the company’s food delivery and international ride-hailing business.
While Zipline is expanding to Austin, Houston, and Cleveland, it has yet to reveal its next US markets. “We expect the US business to grow another 15X this year,” said Rinaudo Cliffton, adding “tens of metros across the US and new, large international markets” by 2027.
While Zipline has the most influence in the US, it faces competition from Alphabet’s drone division Wing, watchdogs like Flytrex and Matternet, and others developing cargo drones for military use.
Researchers at PwC have estimated that the US drone market will grow by 65% annually from 2024 to 2034, with deliveries rising from about 13 million this year to more than 800 million in 2034.
“It’s in a strange place,” said Rinaudo Cliffton. “This thing that we’ve been working on for 12 years that everyone thought was weird and would never work again is now becoming commonplace. Everyone realizes that it doesn’t make sense to have a car with a 3,000-pound combustion engine and someone delivering something to your house that weighs 5 pounds.”
