Tech and AI

Two companies set a target of one million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029, starting in Dallas and Houston

By Staff Writer  |  18 August 2026

Uber is investing an undisclosed sum in Zipline and putting drone delivery inside the Uber Eats app, beginning in Texas before the end of this year and expanding to dozens of American cities. The target is a target and not a run rate: it would need a very large multiple of the network flying today.

Drone delivery has spent a decade as a demonstration. The announcement made on 17 August is the first that treats it as a distribution channel, and the reason has nothing to do with the aircraft.

Until now, a customer who wanted a drone delivery had to know that drone delivery existed, find the operator, and install its app. That is a filter which guarantees small numbers whatever the technology can do. Putting the option inside an app people already open for dinner removes it.

Zipline has built incredible technology, and Uber connects many millions of people with local merchants every day. Together, we're shaping the future of delivery by creating a faster, more sustainable way for people to get what they need. We look forward to bringing this technology to more communities and making autonomous delivery part of everyday life.

Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive, Uber

What has actually been agreed

Deliveries begin later this year in markets where the operator already flies, Dallas and Houston among them, then expand into dozens of United States cities. Customers in participating areas will be able to select drone delivery for eligible orders.

Uber will also make a strategic investment in Zipline. Neither the size of that investment nor the terms of the partnership have been disclosed, and both companies declined to give them. The one million deliveries a day figure is stated by both parties as an ambition for the end of 2029 rather than as a forecast, and reaching it would require an expansion of a different order from anything the network has done so far.

The wider design is a hybrid delivery network. Uber's stated intention is to match each order to the cheapest sensible mode among human couriers, pavement robots and aircraft, which is why it already carries separate drone arrangements with other operators in Dallas and in Ireland and has more than thirty autonomous vehicle partnerships across its mobility, delivery and freight businesses.

The operator's position

Zipline spent its first decade on medical logistics, starting in Rwanda and moving into hospital and clinic supply at scale. The company reports operations on four continents, more than 5,000 hospitals and health facilities served, more than 2.7 million deliveries covering more than 20 million items, and more than 135 million commercial autonomous miles flown, with a delivery completed somewhere in the network roughly every twenty seconds. Those are the company's own figures and neither account examined tested them.

Its American business has moved steadily towards retail and food, most visibly in Texas, and roughly 70 per cent of its flights now take place in the United States. This is the first time its aircraft will be integrated into a retailer's own application rather than sold through its own marketplace, which is the structural change the deal represents.

Teleportation isn't science fiction anymore. It's becoming part of everyday life. Every great transportation revolution has changed where people live, how businesses operate, and how economies grow. Together with Uber, we're taking the next step toward building a world where getting what you need is as fast and effortless as sending a text, no matter where you are.

Keller Cliffton, co-founder of Zipline

What the announcement leaves open

Neither party addressed the two things that will decide whether the target is reachable. The first is airspace: one million deliveries a day across dozens of cities is a volume of low altitude movement that no regulator anywhere currently authorises, and the approvals required are not in the gift of either company.

The second is the ground. Every delivery ends over somebody's garden, and the operator's American growth has so far run through partners with controlled sites rather than dense residential streets. Other operators are scaling on the same assumption, one planning to serve communities covering 30 million customers by the end of this year, another expecting to work from more than 270 stores of a single retailer by 2027.

The aircraft have been ready for some time. What has changed is that ordering one no longer requires the customer to go looking.