Zipline has raised $1.5 billion in new funding at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation, the drone delivery company announced on November 5. The round was led by Paradigm, WCM Investment Management and Layer Global, with participation from Uber, Fidelity, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, Valor Equity Partners, ARK Invest and Salesforce Ventures.
The new valuation nearly triples the $7.6 billion mark Zipline reached after a $600 million raise in January 2026, a jump achieved in under a year. The company says it will put the money toward expanding US manufacturing capacity, hiring and building out delivery infrastructure, according to DRONELIFE.
A Bigger Walmart Footprint
Alongside the funding, Walmart said it will add 300 more delivery sites to its existing drone partnership with Zipline, with room for further expansion. Walmart's drone program has completed more than 2 million deliveries since the retailer began working with Zipline in 2021, and the two companies have steadily widened the rollout each year since.
Zipline disclosed new performance figures to back the expansion. The company says its share of delivery revenue for partner restaurants grew from 10.8% to 34.9% between March and October 2026, alongside a 26% increase in gross merchandise value from orders placed through the platform. In the Dallas-Fort Worth market alone, Zipline says it completed more than 1 million deliveries during 2026, with a median delivery time of 19 minutes from checkout in October. The company puts its total autonomous flight record at 150 million commercial miles without a safety incident.
Why the Capital Matters
The round is among the largest ever raised by a drone company and signals that investors see last-mile delivery, not just defense or mapping, as a path to scale for autonomous aircraft. Zipline competes with Wing, owned by Alphabet, and DJI's FlyCart line, but neither rival has disclosed a comparable valuation or delivery volume in the US market.
Zipline's pitch to investors rests on a long-term target of reaching 1 million deliveries per day by the end of 2029, a goal that would require a dramatic expansion of its manufacturing base beyond its current facilities. The $1.5 billion raise gives the company a war chest to build toward that target, but it also raises the bar for returns: at $21.5 billion, Zipline is valued well above most logistics-robotics peers, and its backers will be watching closely for signs the new Walmart sites convert into recurring order volume rather than one-off pilot activity.
Zipline has not disclosed a timeline for closing the 300 new Walmart sites or whether the expansion will prioritize specific states. The company's next test will be whether it can replicate the Dallas-Fort Worth delivery density, where it crossed 1 million orders in a single market, across a broader map of US suburbs.