Drone delivery company, Zipline, has raised $25 million in series B funding from tech investment and venture capital firms, Visionnaire Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
You may recall that in August 2016, Zipline partnered with the Government of Rwanda to launch a commercial drone service for the country in which the company was to deliver blood products to twenty hospitals and health centers around Rwanda with its drones. Venture Beat reports that Zipline is already making up to 150 flights each day, delivering blood to 21 transfusion facilities around the country.
This funding round brings the total money raised by Zipline to over $40 million from investors like Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Visionnaire Ventures, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang.
Susan Choe, Visionnaire Ventures cofounder, expressed confidence that Zipline is a smart investment that will help save lives. She says, “We look forward to what the future holds for Zipline and the countless people who can benefit from the company’s lifesaving technology.”
On its part, Zipline has said it will use this new funding round to expand its drone delivery service across Africa and other global markets. CEO Keller Rinaudo said Zipline aims to solve the problem of preventable deaths associated with the inability to deliver life-saving medicines. He added that the new funding will help make the company’s vision to “build an instant delivery system for the world, allowing medicines and other products to be delivered on-demand and at low cost, anywhere” possible much sooner.
