Veteran autonomous delivery robot developer Starship Technologies secured an additional $90 million in funding to expand its micro-logistics service globally.
Founded in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, Starship Technologies has focused on using autonomy to address last-mile delivery challenges. Their L4 autonomous delivery robots have successfully completed over six million trips, transporting meals, packages, groceries, and important documents to various customers, including students.
Initially operating in 30 areas and with five million miles, Starship’s robots have now expanded to 80 locations globally, such as the US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, and Finland.
Having raised $160 million over its decade-long run, the €90 million adds more fuel to Starship’s ambition to continue expanding its delivery services.
Starship to expand autonomous delivery robot services
Starship Technologies shared details of its $90 million funding round co-led by the hedge fund Plural and UK venture capital investment firm Iconical. According to the press release, the funds will be used to expand its autonomous robot delivery operations globally and meet the growing demand for seamless home deliveries.
Furthermore, in addition to the expansion across new territories, while providing Delivery-as-a-Service (DaaS) to its existing partners like Sodexo and Grubhub, Starship plans to continue developing machine learning to further develop its AI, wireless charging infrastructure, and other last-mile delivery technology. Starship Technologies co-founder and CEO Ahti Heinla elaborated:
Autonomous delivery isn’t some science fiction concept from Bladerunner for decades in the future, it’s a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day. Building a company like Starship takes at least a decade of perfecting the technology, streamlining operations and reducing costs to make last-mile autonomous delivery viable and sustainable at scale. Now we’re ready to take on the world and with ambitions to build a category-dominating company that can change the daily lives of millions of people in thousands of locations worldwide.
Starship states that each autonomous delivery robot can run for 18 hours straight on a full charge and can safely navigate snow, rocky terrain, and other route blockages. The average delivery only uses the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle for a single cup of tea.
To date, the startup’s robots have displaced nearly 1.8M kg of carbon dioxide. Watch the robots in action in Starship’ ‘s video below.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.