Zipline isn't just some pie-in-the-sky drone startup.
The San Francisco-based company has completed more than 800,000 deliveries in seven countries since its start in 2011. It recently added services for Seattle's Pagliacci Pizza, vitamin and supplement giant GNC, and large health systems like Intermountain Health, OhioHealth and Michigan Medicine.
Zipline developed its drones - which have now flown more than 55 million miles - for autonomous navigation and precision landings using the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI and robotics platform.
The fast-growing company recently landed $330 million in funding at a more than $4 billion valuation.
Zipline is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a program that provides startups with technological support and AI platform guidance.
Delivering With Jetson-Powered Fleets The company's P1 drone, or platform one, has been deployed in production for seven years and currently uses the Jetson Xavier NX system-on-module to process its sensor inputs. It's guided by GPS, air traffic control communications, inertial measurement unit sensors and its onboard detection and avoidance system, with redundancy of guidance for safety.
The NVIDIA Jetson module in the wing is part of what delivers our acoustic detection and avoidance system, so it allows us to listen for other aircraft in the airspace around us and plot trajectories that avoid any conflict, said A.J. Frantz, navigation lead at Zipline.
The company's fixed-wing drones can fly out more than 55 miles, at 70 miles per hour, for deliveries from one of several Zipline distribution centers and then return. Capable of hauling up to four pounds of cargo, they autonomously fly over delivery locations and release packages that float down to their destination by parachute.
The company's P2, or platform two, is a hybrid drone that can fly fast on fixed-wing flights - but also hover. It can carry eight pounds of cargo for 10 miles and packs a droid that can be lowered on a tether to complete deliveries with precision placement. It's intended for use in dense, urban environments.
The P2 uses two Jetson Orin NX modules. One is for the drone's sensor fusion system to understand environments. The other is in the droid that descends by tether - for redundancy to provide added safety.
The P2 droid is about bringing the smallest, quickest, safest, quietest drone in for delivery, coming down precisely and leaving the package - and then going back up, said Joseph Mardall, head of engineering at Zipline. We want to integrate into people's lives in a way that they love and that feels magical.
Zipline completes one delivery every 70 seconds globally.
Flying Away With a Roster of Customers Zipline's service offers advantages that are attracting customers. Its drones, fondly nicknamed Zips,' are capable of 7x faster delivery times compared with vehicle deliveries, according to the company.
Our aircraft fly at 70 miles per hour, as the crow flies, so no traffic, no waiting at lights - we're talking minutes here in terms of delivery times, said Mardall. Single-digit minutes are common for deliveries, so it's faster than any alternative, for sure.
In addition to services for pizza, vitamins and courier meds, Zipline works with Walmart, restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Michigan Medicine, MultiCare Health Systems, Intermountain Health and the government of Rwanda, among others. It also delivers to more than 4,000 hospitals and health centers, according to the company.
Zipline started its service delivering blood in Rwanda seven years ago and later expanded into food and convenience.
Riding Jetson Orin for Energy Efficiency, Environmental Benefits Delivering energy-efficient computing is mission-critical for the run-time of autonomous machines, used in everything from delivery services and agriculture to mining and undersea exploration. NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules offer up to 275 trillion operations per second while providing market-leading energy efficiency.
You can pick the right place for your algorithms to run to make sure you're getting the most out of the hardware and the power that you are putting into the system, said Frantz.
Startups using Jetson-driven applications are also leading the way in sustainability, as more next-generation electric-driven autonomous machines replace those contributing to pollution.
Deliveries by Zipline offer a 97% reduction in carbon emissions compared with gasoline-driven vehicles, according to the company.
We are super excited to significantly reduce carbon emissions, said Mardall. And when building an electric aircraft, efficiency is totally key - every watt, every fraction of a watt, every joule that we can claw back can be turned into payload and range.
Learn more about NVIDIA Jetson Orin.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Zipline isn't just some pie-in-the-sky drone startup.
