Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Starship Technologies raises $17M to roll out more delivery bots

A year ago, Starship Technologies had a couple hundred autonomous bots delivering burritos and pizzas to  students on college campuses and residents in a few neighborhoods.

The company — with $17 million of new capital in its coffers — has expanded its fleet five-fold since COVID-19 swept through the European and North American markets that it operates in. While COVID-19 delivered pain and chaos, including to Starship Technologies, the company has also experienced an uptick in demand as restaurants switched to a takeout and delivery-only model. Starship now has 1,000 autonomous delivery bots in its fleet.

Starship Technologies said last year it planned to expand to 100 universities by late summer 2021. That’s a leap from the 15 campuses it operates at today. Still, the company is expanding in just about every measurable way, including locations, volume of trips, fleet size and workforce, which now number 400 people. The company said it is bringing new college campuses on every month and has a robust pipeline that will come online as classes resume.

The company’s recent $17 million raise, which was announced Tuesday, included investors TDK Ventures and Goodyear Ventures. The new investment brings Starship’s total funding to $102 million. Starship decline to share its valuation. The company also announced it has expanded to UCLA and Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.

Starship infographic1_Jan2021

Image Credits: Starship Technologies

Starship Technologies, which was launched in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, has grown from an enterprise that completed 5,000 deliveries in 2017 to 1 million by January of this year. It’s also expanded beyond college campuses and communities like Milton Keyes, UK to more towns, including a 5,000-household area in Northhampton, UK and the California cities of Mountain View and Modesto.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line...
Post a Comment
Read more

How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions

Planet 13 is the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. Located in Las Vegas, blocks off the Strip, the facility is the size of a small Walmart. By design, it’s hard to miss. Planet 13 is upending the dispensary model. It’s big, loud and visitors are encouraged to photograph everything. As part of the cannabis industry, Planet 13 is heavily restricted on the type of content it can publish on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s not allowed to post pictures of buds or vapes on some sites. It can’t talk about pricing or product selection on others.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Morgan Celeste SF Blogger (@bayareabeautyblogger) on Jan 25, 2020 at 7:54pm PST Instead, Planet 13 encourages its thousands of visitors to take photos and videos. Starting with the entrance, the facility is full of surprises tailored for the ‘gram. As a business, Planet 13’s social media content is heavily restricted a...
3 comments
Read more