Delivery robot company Starship lands $90m raise

Set up by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis in 2014, Starship builds and operates fleets of electrically powered robots that deliver food, groceries, tools and corporate documents over the ‘last-mile’ into customers’ hands. According to the company, its robots have prevented almost 1,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide since launch, completing more than six million deliveries.

Today, Starship operates in 80 locations globally including the UK, US, Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Finland. The new $90m funding round, co-led by Plural and Iconical, takes total investment in Starship to $230m. The company said the cash injection will allow it to expand operations and continue building out its core technology.

“Autonomous delivery isn’t some science fiction concept from Bladerunner for decades in the future, it’s a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day,” Heinla, CEO at Starship Technologies, said in a statement.

“Building a company like Starship takes at least a decade of perfecting the technology, streamlining operations and reducing costs to make last-mile autonomous delivery viable and sustainable at scale. Now we’re ready to take on the world and with ambitions to build a category-dominating company that can change the daily lives of millions of people in thousands of locations worldwide.”