Uber Partners With Zipline to Bring Drone Delivery to Uber Eats.

Zipline started by flying blood to hospitals in Rwanda. Now it is partnering with Uber to deliver food.

Uber and Zipline have announced a strategic partnership that will bring autonomous drone deliveries to Uber Eats in the US later this year. The rollout will start in Zipline's existing markets before expanding to dozens of cities, while Uber will also make an undisclosed investment in the company.

The target is ambitious: one million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029. Zipline says some Uber Eats orders could reach customers within 5 to 10 minutes.

That is a very different use for the technology from where Zipline began. Its first commercial drone delivery service launched in Rwanda in 2016, carrying blood and other medical supplies to hospitals. The company later expanded into Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and other markets, and has since moved into food, retail and healthcare deliveries.

More than two million deliveries later, Zipline has built a large autonomous delivery operation across four continents. Uber already has its own network of human couriers and has been testing autonomous delivery robots. Adding Zipline gives it another way to move orders, particularly where flying them makes more sense than sending them through traffic.

For now, that expansion is happening in the US. Neither company has announced plans to bring the new Uber Eats service to Africa, despite both already operating on the continent.

Hitting that one-million-a-day figure is a massive reach. If Uber and Zipline get anywhere close, drones won't feel like a special delivery option anymore. They'll just be another way your Uber Eats order gets to you.