Zipline is in talks to raise about $1 billion at a valuation near $20 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, which would price the drone delivery company at nearly three times the $7.6 billion it carried in January. Paradigm, already an investor, is in discussions to lead. Tiger Global Management is weighing whether to come back in. The talks are early and the figures can still move.

Zipline’s website puts its lifetime total at nearly 3 million deliveries across more than 140 million miles (225 million kilometers). At $20 billion, that is roughly $7,000 of valuation riding on every package the company has flown since 2016.

DroneXL sent Zipline 30 written questions on September 8 about how its aircraft fails and what its safety record looks like. The answers came back Wednesday afternoon. The incident count was not in them.

Paradigm Would Lead A Round That Nearly Triples January’s Price

Paradigm is in discussions to lead the roughly $1 billion round, with Tiger Global Management considering participation, Bloomberg reported, in a story carried by Transport Topics on Thursday. Zipline and Paradigm declined to comment. Tiger Global did not respond. A close near $20 billion would price the company at about 2.6 times its January mark.

That January mark is eight months old. Zipline announced more than $600 million on January 20 at a $7.6 billion valuation, with Fidelity Management & Research, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners and Tiger Global in the round, and DroneXL covered it the day it landed. Paradigm came in two months later, when a $200 million extension took the Series H to about $800 million.

Founded in 2014, Zipline has raised roughly $2 billion across its history. Another billion would put close to $1.8 billion of that into 2026 alone, in a year that is not over.

Uber Supplies The Demand The Price Assumes

Uber and Zipline announced a partnership on August 17 that puts drone delivery inside Uber Eats, with Uber taking an undisclosed strategic stake. The two are targeting one million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029, starting in Texas this year.

One million a day is the number worth sitting with. Zipline’s entire operating history, every blood unit flown in Rwanda and every burrito dropped in Rowlett, adds up to about three days at that rate. The Uber deal hands Zipline demand it does not have to build one restaurant at a time, and hands Uber an autonomous option that does not need a courier. Walmart, Chipotle, Jimmy John’s and the Cleveland Clinic are already on the customer list.

Uber’s own announcement put first deliveries in existing Zipline markets before the end of the year, which means Dallas and Houston. Everything past that is cities Zipline has not opened yet, flying an aircraft that needs permission it does not have.

The Rule That Makes The Number Work Is Still Unpublished

Part 108, the FAA rule that would make routine beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight standard instead of waiver by waiver, has sat at the White House regulatory office since July 10. Its executive order deadline passed in February. Zipline flies today on Part 135 authorizations.

The delay is not a backlog. Pete Meachum, chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, told a Commercial Drone Alliance audience in Washington that the department held the draft on purpose while Duffy pushed for an internal debate about writing today’s technology into a rule the industry lives with for decades. That was the end of July. The rule has not moved since.

Zipline’s American ceiling is a draft too. The FAA published an environmental assessment on September 11 that would let the company run up to 220,000 deliveries a day across five Texas metros, against the 30,000 a day its Dallas-Fort Worth authorization allows. Public comments on that document close on October 11. The Fish and Wildlife consultation behind it is still open.

Zipline Has Not Put A Cost Per Delivery On The Record

Zipline publishes delivery counts. It publishes how fast those counts are growing. What it has not published is a cost per delivery, a contribution margin or a revenue figure. Anyone pricing the company at $20 billion is underwriting unit economics nobody outside it can check.

The question DroneXL asked of the January round has not gotten easier: whether delivering a burrito can ever look like delivering blood on a spreadsheet. Zipline’s answer is density. Put enough Chargers in one metro, fly them all day, and the fixed cost of a site spreads across thousands of orders instead of hundreds.

There is real evidence for it. In March the company said existing customers were ordering more items per trip, with average items per order up more than 20 percent over three weeks, which is habit rather than novelty. Habit is what makes density arrive. None of that is the same as a published number.

DroneXL’s Take

Twenty billion dollars is a bet that Washington says yes, on schedule, in five Texas metros and then dozens more. That is a policy bet wearing a hardware company’s clothes.

Zipline has earned more room than its competitors here. It is the only one of the three US delivery operators that answered DroneXL’s written safety questions at all, while Amazon has let three deadlines pass on 25 questions and Wing has said nothing on 30. Both Texas parachute landings this summer ended with nobody hurt. The engineering is doing what it is supposed to do.

The paperwork is the exposure. Part 108 was due in February under a presidential order and sits unsigned in September. The Texas ceiling that takes Zipline from 30,000 deliveries a day to 220,000 is a draft with the comment window open. Investors are treating both as questions of timing. Either one can still come back a no.

I don’t buy the idea that a valuation this size makes the regulatory risk smaller. It makes it larger, because a company priced for one million deliveries a day has to keep growing into a rulebook it does not control, and the pressure to launch a market before the paperwork clears goes up with every dollar raised.

Two dates settle most of this. October 11 closes comments on the Texas assessment, and whether Zipline announces a launch in San Antonio, Amarillo or El Paso before that window shuts will say a lot about how the company reads its own risk. The second is Part 108. Robert Reckert of the FAA told Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas this month that the rule is at the “10-yard line” and that he hopes it publishes before the calendar year is out. If it slips into 2027 instead, a $20 billion round will have been priced on a permission that took three years to sign.

Sources: Bloomberg, Transport Topics, Uber Technologies press release, FAA Draft Environmental Assessment for Zipline International Inc., DroneXL Drone Delivery Tracker

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.