Drone technology company Zipline, which rose to prominence flying critical medical supplies like blood bags and vaccines over rugged terrain in Rwanda, has seen the commercial side of its business boom. Deals with Walmart, and a new drone design, are making Zipline a bigger player in the world of retail and home delivery, and not only in hard-to-reach places.
On Wednesday, the company announced new delivery deals in the U.S., with nutritional supplement and wellness retail company GNC for Salt Lake City, and Seattle-area pizza chain Pagliacci Pizza for the greater Seattle metro area. Pagliacci and Zipline have created a new custom-designed pizza box to fit two 13″ pizzas and side dishes in Zipline drones. A third new deal is closer to its drone roots: with New York-based health-care logistics company Associated Couriers, it will offer patients at long-term care facilities across Long Island delivery of specialty prescriptions and medications.
A rendering of P2 Zips charging at a docking station.
Zipline
The deals are part of Zipline’s recent expansion into home delivery, which features its new drone platform, known as its P2 Zip, for what it says is nearly silent delivery, able to travel up to 24 miles each way from dock to dock to local communities, and can reach 99% of addresses in both urban and suburban areas at speeds much faster than traditional ground-based delivery.
Far from its first test cases in mountainous, rural setting regions, Zipline is set on dispelling the myth that the drones can’t work in high-density urban areas.
“When you mention urban, people always think of New York City and Chicago, but the reality is most of the cities in the United States don’t look like Manhattan or Chicago. They look more like Phoenix, Denver, LA, Houston, or Dallas. In those places, this technology can have a huge impact in terms of delivering ten times as fast, for half the cost, and at zero emission,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Wednesday, after Zipline was ranked No. 25 on the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
Zipline has made the CNBC Disruptor list four times.
Rinaudo Cliffton said that Zipline has already delivered in urban cities across the U.S. where people don’t expect this technology to start. Its first two distribution centers are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Walmart.
More coverage of the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50
Zipline drone flights first began in 2016 to help with the national blood delivery network in Rwanda, and according to a study published in Lancet, it is an approach that can result in a reduction in blood waste of up to 67%.
Rinaudo Cliffton sees similar inefficiencies and waste, especially with carbon emissions, in the way deliveries are made today. Citing the four billion instant deliveries predicted to be made in the U.S. alone this year, he says the future will require more drone deliveries.
“We actually think it’s inevitable that this is going to shift towards systems that are quiet, less obtrusive, and actually good for the environment,” he said.
He added that there is a huge disconnect between the logistics network approach used for most deliveries and the size and weight of most packages in e-commerce, at under five pounds.
Early this year, Walmart announced that with partners including Zipline, DroneUp and Flytrex, it had grown to 36 drone delivery hubs across Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia, and has made 6,000 flights.
Last week, Zipline completed its 600,000th delivery and in just two years aims to operate more drone flights every year than most major U.S. airlines.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects its push into new markets to generate an additional $22 billion per year by 2029.
Of that amount, roughly $4 billion will come from PC chips, Qualcomm said at its investor day on Tuesday. The chipmaker just introduced PC processors earlier this year, when it released Snapdragon X for Windows devices.
The latest forecast marks an important milestone for Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, who took over the company in 2021 with a promise to get past a reliance on smartphones. In fiscal 2024, Qualcomm’s handset business reported $24.86 billion in sales, about 75% of its entire chip business.
Qualcomm also said on Tuesday that automotive revenues would rise about 175% by 2029 to $8 billion, of which 80% is tied to contracts that have already been secured.
“We have been on this trajectory realizing that the technologies we have developed over the many years can be very relevant to a number of different industries beyond mobile,” Amon said at the investor event.
Another $4 billion in revenue will come from industrial chips and $2 billion will come from chips for headsets, a category Qualcomm calls XR. About $4 billion of the forecast is a catch-all for other chip sales, like those for wireless headphones and tablets.
Qualcomm shares are up 16% this year, trailing the Nasdaq, which has gained 26%.
Qualcomm grew rapidly over the past decade as its modems and processors became essential parts for high-end smartphones, especially those running Google Android. Qualcomm also sells modems and related parts to Apple for its iPhones.
But the company has warned investors that Apple could choose to stop buying Qualcomm parts as soon as 2027. Qualcomm said on Tuesday that its growing businesses will more than offset any losses from Apple.
A Li Auto L9 electric vehicle (EV) is seen displayed at the Qualcomm booth during the first China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China November 28, 2023.
Florence Lo | Reuters
Qualcomm’s strategy under Amon has been to use the technology its developed for its handset chips, like modems, processors, and AI accelerators, in new markets, including cars, PCs, and virtual reality. The investor event was the first time in years that the company has given a forecast for those new markets. Qualcomm said its total addressable market is as large as $900 billion.
“We put a strategy in ’21, and we’re not changing our strategy,” Amon said.
Laptop and desktop chips are currently dominated by Intel, which has over 70% percent of the market, according to Mercury Research. Intel reported $29 billion in PC chip sales in its 2023.
“The competitive landscape changed between the Windows and Macs,” Amon said, referring to Apple’s move in 2020 to switch from Intel to its own processors. “We saw that as an opportunity, especially as the ecosystem did not have confidence in the existing players to actually deliver a solution.”
The forecast for XR headsets also hints at the growth potential of the VR market over the next five years. Qualcomm supplies chips to many of the top headset makers, including Meta for its Quest and Ray-Bans products.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, Qualcomm calls itself an “edge AI” company, in contrast to cloud-based AI that’s typically powered by Nvidia processors. Company officials didn’t rule out introducing data center products in an interview with CNBC.
Qualcomm suggested that its mobile chips will be able to run the kind of advanced AI that’s restricted to large server farms today, an indication that that company may benefit from the AI boom down the road as the technology becomes more efficient.
“What you can run on the cloud last year, you can run on the device this year,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said at the event.
Options on BlackRock’s popular iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday, ushering in a new way to trade and speculate on the price of bitcoin.
IBIT traded 73,000 options contracts in the first 60 mins of trading Tuesday, Nasdaq told CNBC, placing the fund in the top 20 of the most active nonindex options.
Options trading allows investors to play bitcoin’s notorious volatility by letting them buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price based on whether they anticipate the price will rise or fall in a given period.
“Bitcoin has a lively derivatives market, but in the U.S. it is still tiny compared to other asset classes, and is largely limited to institutional players,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “A deeper onshore derivatives market will enhance the growing market sophistication. This will reinforce investor confidence in the asset, bringing in new cohorts while enabling a greater variety of investment and trading strategies … [That] should, all else being equal, dampen both volatility and downside.”
The market for options contracts on major ETFs can be extremely active, and are widely used by more sophisticated traders. For example, over the past five business days, Interactive Brokers clients have more options orders on the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and the SDPR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) than for the funds themselves, according to data from the brokerage.
The launch of the bitcoin ETF options will likely also lead to new funds that incorporate those options, said Todd Sohn, ETF strategist at Strategas.
“Grayscale already did a filing for a covered call [fund], and I’m sure BlackRock will come out with it too. And then we’re going to get buffers, and then we’re going to get whatever other trend-following-type strategy that folks think of. I think the ecosystem’s really going to start to fly here,” Sohn said.
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The stock prices for H&R Block and Intuit fell after a report Tuesday said Trump’s government efficiency team is considering creating a free tax-filing app.
Intuit, which makes the TurboTax tax-filing software, was down 5%, putting it on pace for its worst day since Aug. 23, when the company’s stock price fell nearly 7%. H&R Block was down 8% and on pace for its worst day since 2020.
President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has held “highly preliminary” discussions about creating the free tax-filing app, The Washington Post reported. The so-called DOGE will not be an official government department but an outside advisory commission. It will be led by billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and aims to slash government spending.
A DOGE tax-filing app would be a competitor of both H&R Block and TurboTax.
Intuit spokeswoman Tania Mercado didn’t directly address the prospect of a government tax-filing app, but told CNBC in a statement that, “For decades, Intuit has publicly called for simplifying the U.S. tax code so individuals, families, and small businesses can better understand their finances.”
George Agurkis, H&R Block’s director of government relations, said in an email that the company looks forward “to engaging with the new Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency on their ideas related to sound and efficient tax administration.”
It’s unclear where a new DOGE tax app would bridge with newer policies the Biden administration already implemented. Under the Biden administration, the IRS in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program in 12 states, allowing qualified taxpayers to file directly through a government portal. The IRS also offers free filing services through its Free File program for taxpayers who make an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
While both Intuit and H&R Block have free filing options, neither have had stellar records when it comes to transparently offering those services.
The Federal Trade Commission in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block for deceptively marketing free filing products and wrongfully deleting users’ in-progress tax data. Intuit, meanwhile, agreed to pay $141 million in restitution “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” according to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.