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Tech News
Drone delivery company Zipline has closed a new funding round that boosts its valuation, alongside an expanded delivery partnership with Walmart. Specific financial terms of the raise were not detailed in available reporting.
DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart in a deal valued at $17 billion, combining the two largest grocery delivery platforms in the US. The deal still requires regulatory approval and follows earlier, unsuccessful acquisition talks between the companies in 2021.
Google has released Gemini 4 Argon, a new frontier AI model it says matches or beats GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Opus 5.5 on benchmarks spanning coding, cybersecurity, science, finance and law. The model is rolling out to Gemini app Pro and Ultra subscribers, AI mode in Search, and Ultra users of the Antigravity development platform, starting at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens before prices double in late November.
FlyTrex has created a role called remote pilot in command (RPIC), where staff like Trevor Wischnewsky monitor fleets of delivery drones and coordinate airspace with competitors such as Zipline, Amazon, and Alphabet's Wing operating over Dallas. The job requires FAA drone pilot certification and a weeks-long FAA-approved training course, and involves overseeing deliveries using GPS, lasers, and sensor data from an operations center.
After years of focus on winning FAA approval for beyond-line-of-sight flights and multi-drone piloting, drone delivery operators are now running into a different obstacle: local control over where drones can actually take off and land. Even as federal rules loosen, municipalities and private landowners retain authority over launch and landing sites, creating a patchwork of local restrictions that can limit service regardless of airspace clearance.
Walmart and Alphabet's Wing announced plans to bring drone delivery to the Denver and Seattle metro areas starting in 2027, part of a broader rollout covering more than 270 Walmart stores nationwide. The service currently operates in five metro areas including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Orlando, with 14 more markets such as Miami, Los Angeles and the Bay Area planned. The drones fly up to 60 mph carrying payloads up to five pounds, with orders placed through Walmart's app or Wing's own app.
Matternet has developed a new last-mile delivery system called M3, featuring a drone capable of carrying up to 11 pounds of cargo and cheaper, simplified dock stations. The company plans to deploy the system commercially in the second half of 2027, with food delivery—including fried chicken—cited as an early use case.
DoorDash revealed its new drone aircraft at its Dash Forward 2026 event, built by DoorDash Labs, the team behind its sidewalk robot Dot. The company says it designed ground logistics, packaging and its Autonomous Delivery Platform software before finalizing the drone itself, sizing the system using historical order data on weight and delivery distance. The drone service, called DoorDash Air, follows a Part 135 air carrier certification the company received from the FAA and announced in July.
DoorDash is rolling out its drone delivery program, DoorDash Air, starting in Northern California with Chipotle and Popeyes as launch partners. The company says its six-propeller drone is quiet at delivery altitude and that early tests showed restaurant-to-door delivery times averaging under five minutes for eligible orders.
DoorDash announced a text-message ordering feature built on its Ask DoorDash chatbot, letting users request food and complete checkout entirely within a text thread. iOS users in the US can now join a waitlist for the beta, with no confirmed launch date or Android availability yet. The company also revealed northern California as the first test site for its DoorDash Air drone delivery service, working with Chipotle and Popeyes, and said it will expand its paid retail-returns service nationwide in November.
A group of neighbors discovered their homes fell within range of Wing's drone-delivery partnership with Walmart, which can drop items from a catalog of over 2,000 products onto a lawn within about 25 minutes. Rather than order household goods, several neighbors began sending each other single potatoes and bottles of water via the delivery drones, which carry up to 2.7 pounds and fly a roughly six-mile radius.
Amazon's Prime Air drones, operating from a distribution center in Richardson, Texas since the city approved the service last December, fly deliveries from 7 am to 8 pm across a 7.5-mile radius. Some nearby residents say the aircraft pass overhead throughout the day producing noise audible inside their homes, while Amazon says such complaints are rare and describes the sound as comparable to a window fan on low.