Zipline raises $1.5B at $21.5B valuation and signs largest autonomous vehicle contract in history with Walmart

Speaker 2: Back on the show for the fourth, fifth, sixth time. I can't keep track, Keller. How you doing? Congratulations.

Speaker 3: You Thank guys landed. What's the latest? Good. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Give us the latest We've

Speaker 4: been busy. I'm I'm standing in our factory which we just quadrupled in size and we Again? Quadrupled the... Yes, again.

Speaker 3: Four heads. Heads. Four heads. We... I'll show you guys around.

Speaker 4: This is basically like end of line.

Speaker 5: So, you

Speaker 4: can see aircraft that are waiting to go out into commercial operations here. Wow. You know, Zipline Zipline builds... And keep in mind... So in this space, we not only build the aircraft, but we build the droid, the small robot that we're using to deliver to people's homes. Yeah. We build all of the ground infrastructure, the docks, which is what charges the aircraft, and we build the drop boxes, which is sort of how we integrate with partners like Sure. Walmart or, you know, any of the other large buildings that we're integrating with. So all of these sub assembly stations are where we are...

Speaker 6: Let me try

Speaker 4: to turn the phone here. All of these sub assembly stations are where we're building. You you can see motors here, latch assemblies. These are all basically feeding the main line. Team's on lunch break right now. Yeah. But the vehicles are flowing down this line. You can see, you know, parallel tubes, ruddervaders. There are 43 major sub assemblies on the aircraft, 700 main components.

Speaker 3: Love how you could be just making up random words right now. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Show us the turbo incabulator. Where's the turbo incabulator?

Speaker 3: The discombobulator. The discombobulator.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Maybe I will maybe I will just troll you guys next time.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You something gotta in to let people know. For the real heads, they'll be like, wow, these two guys really...

Speaker 7: I knew they

Speaker 3: were non technical.

Speaker 2: This is my Gunning Kruger moment. Gelman and Reality. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So

Speaker 4: so this this used to be like the entire space and now this is a quarter of this space.

Speaker 3: Wow. So

Speaker 4: yeah. This is the this is the what we're moving into. Yeah. And so this is Bay 2. It's Bay 12, and then Bay 3 And 4 are through there. I'll show you guys battery manufacturing, but it's gonna take me a minute to walk over there.

Speaker 2: Is this in Texas?

Speaker 4: No. This is all right next to SFO.

Speaker 2: Oh, it's next to SFO. Okay.

Speaker 3: That's right.

Speaker 2: But you are delivering Yeah. In

Speaker 4: Exactly. Most of our commercial operations today are in Texas.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Cool. But we... Yeah. The factory is right here next to headquarters, and we have a thousand people across avionics, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, firmware, software Wow. Autonomy, building all the different systems that are that are required to kind of operate these... The service at scale. We... Yesterday, we announced a $1,500,000,000 financing at a $21,500,000,000 valuation.

Speaker 2: Okay. Congratulations. Yeah. You're backing up the truck.

Speaker 4: Yeah. We we we also announced that we're expanding nationally with Walmart, starting with 300 supercenters in the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 4: So, you know, it's kinda cool. You know, I I I was posting on X yesterday.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: You know, for the first three or four years of Zip Line's history, people didn't even think we were like an economic venture, you know? Like, we were we were operating in Africa, delivering platelets and blood transfusions. And I think that, you know, in retrospect, it was helpful that we got all that experience spending a decade getting to operate outside The US, figuring out how to make these kinds of systems reliable, safe, unit economic. But, know, now that the system is scaling everywhere, it's just becoming obvious this is gonna be one of the biggest industries in the world. Automated logistics is gonna have a big impact on. This is the battery manufacturing. We used to do this with a supplier, but this is this is now... It's a little bit of bummer we're doing because it'd be cooler for you guys to see the teams here. But this is where we're building the batteries on the Zip as well as on the Droid. Those are Droid batteries there. We're doing all the battery welding back here. We bought these machines on eBay. We had a supplier who was doing this for us in San Jose, and they kinda shit the bed. And so, you know, we just very quickly decided, like, alright, like we'll buy some machines on eBay and do it here

Speaker 3: ourselves. Do it

Speaker 2: We'll do That's it great. What's the biggest driver of Walmart adoption? Is it is it like food or medicines or toilet paper? Like what what are people actually buying? Like what's the... What's the power loss skew?

Speaker 4: So the crazy thing is like we had no idea if this was going to work at all Yeah.

Speaker 2: When we

Speaker 4: were launching the service on January fifteenth of last year. Yeah. We deliver 90,000 of the a 100,000 SKUs in a super center.

Speaker 2: So...

Speaker 4: So we deliver two rotisserie chickens

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Birthday cakes, you know, 36 eggs.

Speaker 1: Birthday cakes.

Speaker 4: My my girls

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: No. But keep in mind like we're we're delivering super gently like into your backyard. You know, customers order attachment pieces for garden hoses. We deliver prescriptions.

Speaker 1: So you

Speaker 4: can get almost everything delivered in this way.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: It's hugely popular with college students. Sure. You know, I posted a couple weeks ago a video of a bunch of college students having like a pool party on the 7th Floor of an apartment building You ain't doing and they just have zipline delivering directly next to the pool.

Speaker 3: Feel like I feel like it's very natural, you know, growing up playing Call of Duty, I'm very very, you know, used to just calling in...

Speaker 2: An air strike.

Speaker 3: Not air strike. But, you know,

Speaker 4: your drone your drone supply drop.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Supply drop. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Exactly.... Way that I bought things.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. In the virtual economy essentially. Yeah. You trained in simulation for years to prepare yourself for zip line. That makes sense.

Speaker 4: But by the but by the way, like hugely popular with college students who, know, a lot of times they may not, you know, they're living on the apps, may not even own a car. Yeah. Also hugely popular with nursing homes. Like, I would not have thought these would be, you know, early adopters, but all of these grandmas and grandpas are super comfortable with like Apple Pay and Face ID, and it's huge, man. Like, in these nursing homes, lot of these folks are not that mobile. It's a really big deal to get whatever you want delivered in five to ten minutes. It's also really popular with young parents who Yeah.

Speaker 2: You if

Speaker 4: got a sick kid at 2AM, and you need to order something, being able to, again, get something delivered in ten minutes is is a

Speaker 3: big deal. Yeah. This is saying tactical birthday cake deployed and tactical chipotle tactical Chipotle inbound. Inbound.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But I mean, you you guys should come visit in person sometime Yeah. But this is just giving you an example.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't realize you're right at SFO. Were It's so easy. We had... We were there and back Yeah. And look, this

Speaker 4: is this is this is a livestream of a site. So this is Rowlett, Texas. You can see all the aircraft on the sky map. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven deliveries happening Wow. Simultaneously This delivery just came in. It was just routed. See an aircraft picking up from a business here, delivering down to this home. Oh, look you guys, can you see this? I'm gonna pull it still. Do you see the zip landing there in the back? Oh.

Speaker 3: That's all... Wow. That's crazy....

Speaker 4: Video. It also looks like this zip is pre flight... Oh, yep.

Speaker 2: That's really

Speaker 4: cool. Aircraft coming in to land. Can you

Speaker 2: see it?

Speaker 4: Sure Sure. It's not great. But... Yeah. Exactly. So anyway, you know, this system operates from 6AM to 11PM, seven days a week, every single day of the year including Christmas and New Year's. Oh, look, you guys see a zip? Actually, looks like you guys are gonna see multiple zips taking off here to go make deliveries. You see the zip taking off Wow. Yeah. So this is just constantly... Oh, see the second zip taking off?

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. This is

Speaker 4: not planned. This is not planned, you guys.

Speaker 2: That's Just,

Speaker 4: you know, giving you a sense for like how busy these sites are

Speaker 2: That's amazing. As they're

Speaker 3: delivering. So crazy. Yeah. Just because Yeah.

Speaker 4: Because Yeah. All real.

Speaker 3: By the

Speaker 6: way You would just imagine

Speaker 7: 30 this five

Speaker 4: sites. That's one of 35 sites in The US. Like that's just one site, know. We're building 20 sites per metro doing a million deliveries per metro per year right now.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: So insane that this is what... I mean, how many times has this been depicted in like science fiction? Yeah. And like your own mind and everyone like everyone has just had this idea that this is this sort of inevitable future and yet like I love how open you are with it because it doesn't seem like you're work... You're like, yeah, go... You can try to copy us or or do what we do. But it seems like it's so hard, you're just not really that worried about giving people a little inside look at at the business.

Speaker 4: Well, mean, you know, there were companies with like, you know, trillions of dollars of capital trying to build this for the last thirteen years and, you know, I do think that the technology wound up being harder than people were expecting. Mhmm. You know, any safety critical, highly regulated market that involves like hardware and weather and safety and, you know, all the necessary testing, it takes time. It takes a really dedicated focused team. And like autonomous cars, I think it wound up being harder than maybe investors were thinking. And, yeah. So I I think we... You know, we've always kind of thought that the competitive advantage of the company is that is the team focus, our ability to be practical and get into the real world quickly and learn by doing. So yeah. You know, we've we've tried to generally build in the open.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Amazing.

Speaker 2: I mean, the partnership with Uber makes a lot of sense. Walk me through the Salesforce partnership. Is this... Are we gonna be able to deploy champagne when deals close autonomously? Send send another business partner a steak dinner so we can do business together. How'd that come together?

Speaker 4: Well, with with Uber, you know, we announced a cool thing. So I was actually just giving this tour that I'm showing you guys around. I was giving this tour to to Dara a couple weeks ago. And agreeing to them, basically forming this vision to do a million deliveries a day together, that's a quarter of their deliveries in The US via Uber Eats. Yeah. It's, know, delivering in this way, you can be 10 times as fast, less expensive, zero pollution, less traffic for neighborhoods, quieter, safer

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 4: Than car based delivery. You know, the advantages... The biggest advantage is that you're having an in restaurant experience at home. And and what we are seeing when you look at the demand just in Dallas, for example, is that if you were to extend that demand to the rest of The United States, you would 10x the size of the delivery market. Mhmm. So there's so much latent demand here that, you know, it's it's similar. If you remember when Uber was launching in the Bay Area and everybody was like, oh, even if Uber is 50% of the size of the taxi market, it'll only be a $20,000,000,000 company.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That was crazy.

Speaker 4: But, you know, it turns out that like it's now 10 times the size of the taxi market.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No. No. No. It may... It makes so much sense for delivery. Are you are you like just taking off the the zip like For

Speaker 3: me for me, like I'm just... I'm waiting for this to roll out broadly in California because I love pho. It's like one of my favorite foods. We don't have any Yeah. Pho restaurants in my town. Oh. And so it's like a thirty five minute drive to the closest place and it's not that... Live? Where do you live, Geordie?

Speaker 4: Can you just... Let's just dox you right now. Where exactly do It's you well known.

Speaker 2: I live in Malibu. So flying over

Speaker 3: those mountains. Well, we're launching

Speaker 4: LA LA LA is early next year.

Speaker 2: Well, we're... Well, our studio is in Hollywood, so I imagine we'll be in the delivery zone for that.

Speaker 3: I need pho airdrops starting Yeah. In November November through, you know, February. But

Speaker 2: make sure you prioritize Pasadena over Malibu because Malibu is kind of...

Speaker 4: Hit that button.

Speaker 3: This... You got it, John.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Alright. But, no. I mean,

Speaker 4: one one one one interesting point on this, think it's it's particularly relevant for LA is that, you know, zipline delivers out to way further than cars are typically willing to deliver out to, which means that you actually see like 10 x the selection in terms of restaurants. So for us, example, you know, my wife is like a huge fan of Din Tai Fung, and we Oh, yeah. Never eat there because it's far away. But one of the advantages of this is you can, you know, you can go 10 times faster, but you can also go a lot farther. Mhmm. Which means that you get access to a whole bunch of different like amazing options or brands that you wouldn't have access to with car based delivery.

Speaker 2: Wait wait. 10

Speaker 3: course meal in your home and it's just they're each being delivered.

Speaker 2: One at a time?

Speaker 3: Maybe. Yeah. We actually do that. Course

Speaker 2: it out for me. Yep. Assembling your best.

Speaker 4: Think about it. If you're having like a big dinner party for 10 people, you know, the idea that you have all the food delivered and it just sits there and gets gross and cold over the course of an hour is not not how the future's gonna work.

Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. So... Amazing. Yeah. We...

Speaker 3: It's been amazing. I've I've I've loved every like, it just... Getting getting all these snapshots.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's been really fun....

Speaker 3: History has been has been awesome.

Speaker 4: Yeah. You guys are welcome to come. I mean, definitely come visit the factory next

Speaker 2: time you're in

Speaker 4: the Bay Area.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Mean, we we have to build 50,000 aircraft a year here. That's nice.

Speaker 5: And, you

Speaker 4: know, so it's gonna be... And yeah, this... Think this scale of growth, like, there's so much that America can do in terms of Yeah. Aerospace over the coming years. And I think, you know, there are lot of people who had thought, oh, you know, The US is losing in terms of drones. Like, The US might be losing in terms of, you know, four pound quadcopters.

Speaker 2: Sure. Sure. Sure.

Speaker 4: But these are like totally different classes of vehicles, and, you know, it's all to play for. And this kind of infrastructure matters lot in The US. It also matters in all these other countries that

Speaker 3: are Cool.

Speaker 4: Decide whether they're gonna build on top of like, The US tech stack, or one of our adversaries' tech stacks.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: And it's really probably only two options. Yeah. And so, you know, it's really... I don't know. It it inspires me. Like, this is an area where America is winning, and and there's a lot of hard work to do, and to see the technology now scaling very quickly in cities across The US, and you know, benefiting families, letting families spend more time with their loved ones, less times having anxiety about errands. Totally. It's going have a big impact.

Speaker 2: I love it. Thank you for what you're declaring order inbound. Backing up the truck. Great talking to

Speaker 4: have speaker we have a speaker on the next gen droid. Should we like play the Call of Duty?

Speaker 3: Definitely need... Sound files... After you

Speaker 2: get your second delivery, it hits... Scrappy. Another one.

Speaker 3: And then I think you might... It might be a little too scary for the general population, but you can... We... If we can set that in our preferences.

Speaker 2: Successful delivery? Yeah.

Speaker 3: Okay. We got another. Keller, give our team the best. Incredible progress. Can't wait for the next update and we'll we'll see... We'll we'll stop by

Speaker 2: next

Speaker 3: time Goodbye. We're in the

Speaker 4: Awesome you guys. Thanks.

Speaker 3: Good man.

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