Logistics startup Zipline has flown more than 38 million miles with its autonomous electric delivery drones since the company was founded in 2014. Zipline put its first fleet to work in Rwanda, delivering blood and other health supplies to clinics and hospitals. Since then, the Silicon Valley startup has expanded its service in six other countries, with limited delivery service and distribution centers in three states.
On Wednesday, Zipline showed off its next-generation aircraft, which it hopes will make rapid aerial deliveries an everyday convenience for customers throughout the U.S., even in densely populated urban areas.
Zipline’s new drone, dubbed the Platform 2 or P2 Zip, is capable of carrying up to eight pounds worth of cargo within a ten-mile radius, and can land a package on a space as small as a table or doorstep.
“The reason that number is important,” says Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, “is that when you look at e-commerce in the US, a vast majority of packages weigh five pounds or less.”
Zipline cofounders, CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton and CTO Keenan Wryobek
Zipline
The P2 Zip can travel ten miles in ten minutes, and the company can make a delivery approximately seven times faster than any typical service you may order from today, the CEO said. Rapid deliveries by drone may put an end to “porch pirates,” Rinaudo Cliffton said, referring to the theft of packages left on a doorstep while the customer is away from home.
While Zipline’s original drone, the P1 Zip, features a fixed wing or glider-like design, the P2 employs both lift and cruise propellers and a fixed wing. These help it maneuver precisely and quietly, even in rainy or windy weather.
To deliver cargo to a customer’s door, the P2 Zip hovers around 300 feet above ground level and dispatches a kind of mini-aircraft and container called the “droid.” The droid descends on a long thin tether, and maneuvers quietly into place with fan-like thrusters before setting down for package retrieval.
Zipline’s original P1 drones will remain in production and in wide use, says Rinaudo Cliffton. The P1 Zip can fly a longer distance, delivering up to five pounds of cargo within a 60-mile radius, but it requires a larger space for take off, landings and “the drop.”
The P1 Zip lets cargo down with a parachute attached, so its payload lands within a space about the size of two car parking spots. After a P1 Zip returns to base, an employee needs to disassemble it, then set up a new one, dropping in a freshly charged battery for the next flight.
Zipline’s new P2 Zip can dock and power up autonomously at a charging station that looks something like a street lamp with an arm and a large disc attached to that arm:
A rendering of P2 Zips charging at a docking station.
Zipline
Zipline docks can be installed in a single parking spot or alongside a building depending on zoning and permits. Zipline envisions the docks set up by restaurants in a downtown shopping district, or alongside the outer wall of a hospital, where the droid can be inserted into a window or dumbwaiter, retrieved, and reloaded by healthcare workers indoors.
Setting up one of these docks takes about as much work as installing an electric vehicle charger, Rinaudo Cliffton said.
Before developing the P2 Zip, Zipline had established logistics networks in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda already. It is operating some drone delivery networks in the US, in North Carolina, Arkansas and Utah — but the P2 will help it expand that network.
Partners who plan to test deliveries via P2 Zip include the healthy fast-casual restaurant Sweetgreen, Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Michigan Medicine, Multicare Healthcare System in Tacoma, Wash., and the government of Rwanda.
Zipline is not alone in its ambitions. Zipline is part of a program with other startups like DroneUp and Flytrex to make deliveries for Walmart. Amazon, meanwhile, has been working on making drone deliveries a reality here for nearly a decade, although that business has struggled to overcome a thicket of regulation and low demand from test customers.
Quiet and green is the goal
Zipline head of engineering Jo Mardall told CNBC the company focused much of its engineering on making sure the drones were not just safe and energy-efficient, but also quiet enough that residents would embrace their use.
“People are worried about noise, rightly. I’m worried about noise. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s a bunch of loud aircraft flying above my house,” he said. “Success for us looks like being in the background, being barely audible.” That means something closer to rustling leaves than a car driving by.
The droid component of the P2 Zip is designed to enter distribution centers through a small portal, where it’s loaded up with goods for delivery.
Zipline
The P2 Zips have a unique propeller design that makes this possible, Mardall explained, adding, “The fact that the Zip delivers from from 300 feet up really helps a lot.”
Mardall and Rinaudo Cliffton emphasized that Zipline aims to have a net-beneficial impact on the environment while giving business a better way to move everything from hot meals to refrigerated vaccines just in time to customers.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, they explained, avoid worsening traffic congestion by going overhead. And since Zipline’s drones are electric, they can be powered with renewable or clean energy, without the emissions from burning jet fuel, gasoline, or diesel.
But most importantly, the CEO said, Zipline’s drone delivery allows companies to “centralize more inventory,” and “dramatically reduce waste.”
A study published by Lancet found that hospitals using Zipline services were able to reduce their total annual blood supply waste rate by 67%, the CEO boasted.
“That is a mind-blowing statistic, and a really big deal. It saves health systems millions of dollars, by reducing inventory at the last mile and only sending it when it’s needed.”
Zipline is aiming to bring that efficiency to every corner of commerce, the CEO said. It’s also aiming to keep the cost of drone delivery competitive with existing services, like FedEx and UPS, or food delivery apps like Uber Eats and Instacart.
But first, the startup plans to conduct more than 10,000 test flights using about 100 new P2 Zips this year. With its existing P1 drones, Zipline is already on track to complete about 1 million deliveries by the end of 2023, and by 2025 it expects to operate more flights annually than most commercial airlines.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.
The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.
The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”
In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.
Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.
Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.
Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.
Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected
Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.
Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.
Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.
During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.
Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.
Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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HP reported second-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates for revenue but missed on earnings and guidance, in part due to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Shares sank 15% after the report.
Here’s how the company did versus analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 71 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
Revenue: $13.22 billion vs. $13.14 billion expected.
Revenue for the quarter increased 3.3% from $12.8 billion in the same period last year. HP reported net income of $406 million, or 42 cents per share, down from $607 million, or 61 cents per share, a year ago.
For its third quarter, HP said it expects to report adjusted earnings of 68 cents to 80 cents per share, missing the average analyst estimate of 90 cents, according to LSEG. Full-year adjusted earnings will be within the range of $3 to $3.30 per share, while analysts were expecting $3.49 per share.
HP said its outlook “reflects the added cost driven by the current U.S. tariffs,” as well as the associated mitigations.
“While results in the quarter were impacted by a dynamic regulatory environment, we responded quickly to accelerate the expansion of our manufacturing footprint and further reduce our cost structure,” HP CEO Enrique Lores said in a statement.
Lores told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that HP has increased production in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Mexico and the U.S. By the end of June, Lores said the company expects nearly all of its products sold in North America will be built outside of China.
“Through our actions, we expect to fully mitigate the increased trade-related costs by Q4,” Lores said in the interview.
HP will hold its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.