Drone delivery startup Zipline expands to Texas with Walmart partnership
A drone operator loads a Walmart package into Zipline’s P1 fixed-wing drone for delivery to a customer home in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 30, 2023.
Bunee Tomlinson
Zipline, a startup that delivers everything from vaccines to ice cream via electric autonomous drones, expanded its service to the Dallas area on Tuesday through a partnership with Walmart.
In Mesquite, Texas, about 15 miles east of Dallas, Walmart customers can sign up to receive orders within 30 minutes, delivered on Zipline’s newest unmanned aerial vehicles, known as P2 Zips.
The drones are capable of carrying up to eight pounds worth of cargo within a 10-mile radius, and can land a package on a space as small as a table or doorstep. The company, which ranked 21st on CNBC’s 2024 Disruptor 50 list, plans to expand soon in the Dallas metropolitan area.
Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton said P2 Zips have “dinner plate-level” accuracy. They employ lift and cruise propellers and feature a fixed wing that helps them maneuver quietly, even through rain or gusts of wind up to 45 miles per hour.
In the delivery process, a P2 Zip will hover around 300 feet above ground level and dispatch a mini-aircraft with a container called the delivery zip, which descends on a long tether and moves into place using fan-like thrusters before setting down and allowing package retrieval.
Both the P2 Zip and the delivery zip use cameras, other sensors and Nvidia chips to determine what’s happening in the environment around them, and to avoid obstacles while making a delivery.
In March 2025, Zipline announced that its drones have logged more than 100 million autonomous miles of flight to-date, a number equivalent to flying more than 4,000 loops around the planet, or 200 lunar round trips, the company said in a video to mark the milestone.
Since it began operations in 2016, Rinaudo Cliffton said, Zipline has completed around 1.5 million deliveries, far more than competitors in the West. Wing, a Zipline rival focused on residential deliveries, has reported more than 450,000 deliveries since 2012.
Zipline initially focused on logistics in health care, making deliveries by drone to clinics and hospitals in nations where infrastructure sometimes impeded timely access to life-saving medicines, blood, vaccines and personal protective equipment. The company, valued at $4.2 billion in a 2023 financing round, is now making deliveries in Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Japan and the U.S., and expanded well beyond hospitals and clinics.
In addition to Walmart, customers include Sweetgreen, Chipotle and other quick-serve restaurants, as well as health clinics and hospital systems such as Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic.
Zipline’s launch in Mesquite comes days after President Donald Trump’s announcement of widespread tariffs roiled markets on concern that companies would face rising costs and a slowdown in consumers spending. Rinaudo Cliffton said he doesn’t anticipate massive impediments to Zipline’s business, as its drones are built in the U.S., with manufacturing and testing in South San Francisco.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63 to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.
Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.
The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.
That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.
The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.
SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.
Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.
These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.
Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.
WATCH: Threats to SpaceX & Tesla as Musk, Trump feud heats up
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Bezos is ranked third in Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a net worth of about $240 billion. He’s behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk at $363 billion and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at $260 billion.
WATCH: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ wedding sparks Venice protests
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
WATCH: Google buyouts highlight tech’s cost-cutting amid AI CapEx boom
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