Medical drone delivery startup Zipline raises $190 million in funding (with video)

The autonomous drone market has seen significant interest recently, as various use cases – with both freight hauling and human transport – receiving visibility. Several startups have cropped up in the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) space, looking to transport freight and humans across densely populated urban areas to decrease transit times that are lengthened due to traffic-clogged streets.

The company’s entry into Ghana has been recent; Zipline formalized a partnership with the Ghanaian government in April. The company has opened four distribution centers in the country, with each inventory catering to 2.5 million people on average. Zipline’s operations in Ghana are financially supported by the vaccine alliance Gavi, founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the UPS Foundation. Buoyed by the fresh round of investment, the company plans to support 700 million people within its ecosystem over the next five years.

In many ways, Zipline has slowly come to be at the heart of on-demand medical supplies delivery within the countries it expands into. For instance, the startup now delivers over 65 percent of all the blood supply needs of Rwanda outside of the country’s capital.

“There is a growing feeling around the world that technology is not benefitting the vast majority of people,” said Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline, in a statement. “The old conventional wisdom has been that building a successful technology company requires exploiting people’s personal information or hijacking their attention. Zipline wants to establish a new model for success in Silicon Valley by showing the world that the right technology company with the right mission and the best team can help improve the lives of every person on the planet.”