Starship Technologies

Starship Technologies, Inc. is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia, and Helsinki, Finland. Starship also has offices in London and Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom and in Hamburg, Germany.
As of March 2024, the company has raised approximately $230 million in equity funding and €50 million in long term loan facilities.
Starship Technologies was founded by Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla in 2014. Heinla and Friis had taken part in a NASA competition, the Centennial Challenge, to design and build autonomous robots to retrieve geological samples. While their team (named 'Kuukulgur', or 'Moon Rover') did not win the competition, Heinla and Friis began working to apply the technology they had developed to the problem of last mile delivery following a meeting in London. Starship Technologies OÜ was registered on 11 June 2014 in Tallinn, Estonia. Starship Technologies, Inc., a Delaware corporation, was registered in San Francisco, United States, on 28 September 2016.
Starship Technologies launched pilot services in 2016, in the US and the UK among other countries, with commercial services launched in 2017. In April 2018, Starship launched its autonomous delivery service in Milton Keynes in partnership with Co-op and Tesco. In March 2020, Starship became the first robot delivery service to operate in a British town center with the rollout of its service in Central Milton Keynes. By November 2020, Starship claimed that Milton Keynes had the 'world's largest autonomous robot fleet'. By March 2023 the company was delivering in seven British cities.
In January 2019, Starship partnered with Sodexo to launch robot food delivery services at George Mason University in Virginia, US. With a fleet of 25 robots at launch, this was the largest implementation of autonomous robot food delivery services on a university campus at that time. In 2019, it expanded its services to six other US universities. and in 2020 to two more.
In March 2020, following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Starship made many redundancies. However, half a year later, and after the US universities reopened, it rehired many of the staff.
In 2022, a video of a Starship robot being run over by a train at a level crossing near James Madison University campus circulated online, highlighting the possibility of robots being stuck in unanticipated obstacles.
In 2022, the company announced the launch of delivery services in Finland.
As of October 2024, Starship's fleet of more than 2,000 robots worldwide had completed 7 million deliveries, driven over 8.5 million miles, and made 150,000 daily road crossings.
Starship develops and operates electrically-powered last mile delivery robots. The robots ride on sidewalks with a maximum speed of 6 kilometres per hour (3.7 mph) (pedestrian speed), can be remotely controlled if autonomous operation fails, and are only used for relatively short-distance local delivery. The robots use feature detection of edges and mapping techniques to determine the suitability of navigable terrain. They weigh 55 pounds (25 kg) unloaded, and can carry up to 20 pounds (9.1 kg) of deliveries. Their average battery life is 18 hours, and the typical robot can travel around 40 km per day. The robots are equipped with a sensor suite that includes ten stereo and time-of-flight cameras, GPS, ultrasonic sensors, radar and inertial measurement. The robots have loudspeakers to communicate with humans they meet, with a range of optional voices and characters and the ability to play music. Users order Starship deliveries using the company's app or through the existing platforms of retail partners. Once deliveries arrive, users unlock the robots through biometric identity verification.
Before operating commercially the service was tested in over 100 cities and 20 countries around the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Starship expanded the number of delivery robots used for grocery in the UK and the US to help with the delivery driver shortage. As of October 2024, the company operates in over 100 locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Estonia.
Between 2018 and 2021, Starship Technologies worked with Milton Keynes Council to conduct a study reviewing the impact of zero-emissions robots in cities. According to the report, Starship's robots "prevented 280,000 car journeys, and over 500,000 miles travelled in cars, leading to 137 tons of CO2 saved, and 22 kg of NOx saved during the study period".
Economically, Starship's robots are considered to be cheaper than human-staffed delivery services. In 2018, Starship claimed that its robots cost US$5500, and hoped to reduce this to $2250.
The Starship's original headquarters were established in London but were moved to San Francisco in 2018.
In 2014–2018, Allan Martinson served as the chief operating officer of Starship. In 2018, the chief executive officer Ahti Heinla switched to the position of the chief technology officer and Lex Bayer, Airbnb's former head of business development, payments, and Airbnb for business, was hired as the new CEO. Starship hired Alastair Westgarth, former CEO of Google X company, Loon, as their CEO in June 2021. Westgarth left the company and Heinla returned as chief executive in December 2023.
By 2019, Starship had received US$85 million in venture funding. In addition to Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, other investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, Morpheus Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, MetaPlanet Holdings, Daimler AG, Grishin Robotics, ZX Ventures, Playfair Capital and others.
In January 2022, Starship received a €50 million investment from the European Investment Bank. In March 2022 the company raised $100 million in investments, bringing total investment raised to $202 million.
In February 2024 the company raised $90 million led by Plural and Iconical, bringing equity funding to $230 million and another €50 million long term loan facilities by the European Investment bank in January of 2022.
Starship also announced a partnership with Veriff in January 2022 to provide authentication and re-verification services for its fleet of autonomous delivery robots in the UK. This partnership made Starship the first company to create a fully autonomous end-to-end delivery service for age-restricted items.