Zipline adds Cleveland Clinic as growth jumps 13x

Zipline ramps up US expansion

Zipline says the number of businesses offering delivery through its app grew 13 times during the first half of 2026, a sign that its drone marketplace is moving well beyond pilot projects.

The company says it has now completed more than 2.5 million commercial deliveries, including one million in the last year alone. It also says it operates more flights per day than major US airlines, with roughly 70% of those flights taking place in the United States.

Cleveland Clinic partnership opens healthcare push

In Cleveland, Zipline is starting its first US healthcare home delivery service with Cleveland Clinic. The service will deliver prescriptions to eligible patients at no additional cost in the Beachwood suburb.

Zipline said the programme will later expand to:

• lab samples
• medically tailored meals
• hospital-at-home materials

The move gives Zipline a healthcare use case in the US that goes beyond restaurant and retail delivery.

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Austin launch targets five-minute deliveries

Zipline is also entering Austin, where customers will be able to receive food and retail deliveries from local businesses in as little as five minutes.

The company said several partners are already lined up or expanding:

• Wonder will use Zipline delivery at 50 upcoming Texas food halls
• Little Caesars is expanding from five Zipline locations to 65
• Chipotle is already on the platform alongside local restaurants

Veteran hires from Tesla, Waymo, and Uber

To support the expansion, Zipline has hired three senior executives with backgrounds in transport and delivery.

Sendil Palani joins as CFO after 17 years at Tesla, where he was VP of Finance and joined when the company produced one vehicle per day.

Kevin Vosen becomes Chief Legal Officer after nearly seven years in the same role at Waymo.

Allen Penn, who helped grow Uber from 25 employees to more than 25,000 and ran global operations at Uber Eats, joins as Head of Commercial.

Scale claims get harder to ignore

Zipline says it has flown more than 135 million autonomous miles and delivered 20 million items without a safety incident. The company said that distance is equivalent to driving every road in America 32 times.

As drone delivery competition heats up, Zipline’s latest numbers point to a business trying to scale like a consumer delivery platform rather than a niche logistics provider. The Cleveland Clinic launch, in particular, pushes that case beyond food and retail.