Keller Cliffton

Founder and CEO @Zipline. Previously, built DNA/RNA computers and climbing walls. Harvard grad. Ex-professional rock climber.

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

What if your dinner could fly over traffic instead of sitting in it? We are now scaling to provide Uber Eats more than 1 million autonomous deliveries a day. Uber is becoming an investor in Zipline. We’ve entered the scaling era for robotics and physical AI.

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@dan_hues @typesfast @typesfast and I will figure something out 🧐

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@JonnyNemo Thank you for believing in us! Excited to finally launch together early next year

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

Today, Zipline raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation.

When we started Zipline, flying autonomously in the US was illegal. Which made it really hard to convince investors to give us money! But we were too naive to think that meant we shouldn’t try.

We started the company on a cow farm. We worked out of run-down construction trailers so that we could keep engineering, manufacturing, and flight test all unified and in one place. Hiring people from normal companies like Google was hard because we didn’t have a cafe or laundry service. But enough risk takers and rebels wanted to go on an insane adventure with us. They became the early team.

We decided to launch in smaller countries and focus on life-saving use cases. We hired incredible entrepreneurs and operators in Rwanda, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, and other countries. For eight years, Zipline expanded our service across Africa, serving thousands of hospitals and health facilities and reducing maternal mortality by 51%. Today, the network saves over 14k lives every year and is cash flow positive.

Last year, Zipline launched at scale in the US and the service exploded. We grew flight volumes about 100x over the last 18 months, and now make more than a million deliveries a year per metro. We’re now expanding with our partners to millions of deliveries per day. Normal families love having access to anything they need in 10-20 minutes, no matter where they live. Spend more time with loved ones and less time worrying about errands.

Zipline builds drone delivery that is silent and safe. No one wants to hear an extremely loud “swarm of bees” delivering to their backyard or their neighbor’s. Automated delivery needs to be insanely quiet, which guided the overall architecture of our technology delivering from 330 ft in the air. We are 6 times quieter than the closest competitor during delivery. Zipline also now has over 150m commercial autonomous miles (10x the rest of the industry combined) and no safety incidents. Neighborhoods should demand silent and safe delivery!

Today, Zipline is announcing two things. First, we just signed the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history to expand automated delivery nationally with Walmart, our first and biggest partner in the US. We’re starting by scaling to 300 supercenters throughout the country. Second, we’ve raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation from existing and new investors, led by Paradigm, WCM, and Layer.

Zipline was a hard company to believe in for the first ten years of our history. Investors didn’t think the company was “investable”. Most people didn’t even think Zipline was an economic venture. Thanks to those who have rooted for us along the way. To all of the tens of millions of customers and families who rely on Zipline day in and day out: thank you for helping us build the future. Zipline has grown more than @ryanzip, @keenanwyrobek, I, and all others at the company could have imagined.

There is a big opportunity to build a new layer of infrastructure for humanity over the coming years. We want to approximate teleportation. We can build a logistics network that connects and serves all people on earth. We can free human flourishing from the choking constraint of traffic and roads. There are no roads where we’re going. 🚀🌎

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@dawallach Thanks! I was on TBPN right after you this morning. Wanted to show them this video: https://t.co/0UEoK3Or9S. Have @johncoogan and @jordihays seen it? You were a legend to the class of 09, I remember hearing the Pharrell story

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@ryanjdaniels It seems crazy even in retrospect. We should have died

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@emiliemc Thanks Emilie!

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@pmtiegs @TheBrianMcManus Brian is so awesome

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@8en Thanks Ben 🙂

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

People seeing Zipline in the wild for the first time 😆

[Reindustrialize Who's Who @r14now]

@Keller 10 year overnight success!

Complete aside: I was on the phone with someone in Houston recently who stopped the conversation to describe a strange object in the night sky. Seems like it dropped something. Wait; was it coming back up?

I instantly knew what it must be.

[Reindustrialize Who's Who @r14now]

@Keller 10 year overnight success!

Complete aside: I was on the phone with someone in Houston recently who stopped the conversation to describe a strange object in the night sky. Seems like it dropped something. Wait; was it coming back up?

I instantly knew what it must be.

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@r14now Maybe aliens? 👽

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@JessieTweeting I agree

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@theissler Super honored. It's been an adventure with many ups and downs. Rwanda is one of the most special countries on earth

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@dufitalexis1 @maggiemjim Rwanda is growing faster than ever!

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@zruss That's not Zipline!

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@Charlie_leahy_ There is a team working on this

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@nasdaily There was still a lot of luck involved ;)

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@MoneyLobster @LifeFlightMaine @NorthernLightH We do!

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@davemorin That launcher was nuts 🙈. True OG

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@justinkan Ha, speaking of meth labs. When we were launching in 2016, we had to paint vehicles and couldn’t get a permit to build an actual paint shop. So we built a $500 shed that we bought at Home Depot, then painted them ourselves at the test site. It was like a scene from Breaking Bad

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@maggiemjim @stephnevins A month later, we launched the next gen service in the US. That’s when everything started growing at hyperscale

[Keller Cliffton @Keller]

@maggiemjim My wife and I welcomed our second child during this time. That first month, @stephnevins was a good sport and was willing to do weekends together at the test site. She was breastfeeding our baby in one of our construction trailer conference rooms 🤦