DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Starship Technologies

Autonomous delivery vehicle company founded in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla (CEO) and Janus Friis.

Founded
2014
HQ
San Francisco, CA
Status
private

The verified answer

As of Aug 2026, DEPLOY verifies Starship Technologies: 2 models, 14 deployments across 13 regions, 6 active incidents. 16 sources back the record.

CategorySidewalk delivery

Appears inLogistics robots

Overview

Autonomous delivery vehicle company founded in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla (CEO) and Janus Friis. Starship Technologies developed the world's first autonomous sidewalk delivery robot, completing over 8 million autonomous deliveries across 50+ US college campuses and cities. Raised $50M Series C in October 2025, bringing total funding to $80M+.

The fleet of 2,700+ robots operates at Level 4 autonomy (99% autonomous) for Uber Eats and campus delivery. Originally founded in Estonia, now HQ in San Francisco.

Verified record

Verified deployments
14 deployments on file
Active incidents
6 incidents on file

Key facts

Robots

L4 autonomous sidewalk delivery robots (~2-mile radius)

Primary markets

University campuses, grocery retailers, delivery apps, industrial sites

Geography

US and Europe

Navigation

Radar, cameras, sensors + machine learning

HQ

San Francisco, CA (founded 2014; Skype co-founders' lineage)

Co-founder

Janus Friis (Skype co-founder)

Series C

0M (October 2025)

Deliveries

7M+ autonomous deliveries completed

Partners

Uber Eats, university campuses

Hero image candidate

upload.wikimedia.org (source: Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY 4.0)

Campus-to-city pivot

1,200 robots pulled from US university campuses to focus on city grocery delivery (July 2026) — corridor signal: depot model shifting from campus to urban

10M deliveries milestone

Surpassed 10 million autonomous deliveries (Feb 2026)

Just Eat partnership

Just Eat partnership — UK expansion including Barnsley 'Tech Town' (Feb 2026)

US city expansion funding

$50M raised to bring Starship robots to US cities, expanding from European grocery and American campus operations

Total deliveries

8M+ autonomous deliveries

Fleet size

2,700+ robots

Data & sources

Press releases

7

Patent documents

4

Web sources

5

16 sources backing this record.View all →

Current platform

Starship Delivery Robot

Starship Technologies' delivery robot is a six-wheeled autonomous sidewalk robot (with a bogie system to climb curbs) that carries up to ~9-10 kg (about three grocery bags), travels around 4 mph, and runs up to ~18 hours per charge; it has completed millions of commercial deliveries across university campuses and towns.

sidewalkView model →

Current platform

Starship Bot

Starship Bot is the six-wheeled autonomous sidewalk delivery robot of Starship Technologies, founded in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla, who is also chief executive, and Janus Friis, with headquarters in San Francisco and engineering hubs in Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland. The robot carries an insulated cargo compartment and navigates sidewalks at low speed using multi-sensor fusion of cameras, radar, ultrasonics, and GPS, operating as an operator-supervised Level 4 system: it drives autonomously with remote human oversight and takeover available rather than being driverless, a distinction the registry preserves against Starship's own marketing of Level 4 autonomy without active human supervision. Starship runs a captive operator-supervised service model, operating its own fleet and selling the delivery backbone to apps, retailers, and campuses rather than selling robots to third parties, integrating with platforms such as Uber Eats, Just Eat, Bolt, Foodora, Grubhub, and Wolt. As of Starship's own April 2026 disclosure it had passed ten million cumulative autonomous deliveries with more than three thousand robots across more than three hundred service areas in eight countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and the United States, with more than sixty-five US university campuses as its anchor segment; Denmark, sometimes listed in priors, is not among them. It remains privately held, having closed a fifty-million-dollar Series C led by Plural in October 2025 that brought cumulative funding above two hundred eighty million dollars, with no valuation disclosed by the company.

sidewalkView model →

Starship Technologies on the deployment map

View the global map

14 verified deployments across 13 regions, newest verified Jul 2026. Explore where Starship Technologies's robots are operating, by place and type.

Free to use on your site, with a link back to DEPLOY.

View the full Starship Technologies deployment record →

Free to use on your site, with a link back to DEPLOY.

Relationships

Claims ledger

Public, dated claims by Starship Technologies, each tracked against the evidence. Status is a DEPLOY assessment from primary sources: verified means an independent source confirms it; contradicted means one refutes it; open means the outcome is not yet determinable. Every entry keeps its verbatim quote and source so you can check the call yourself.

Claim Integrity: 100% (4 of 4 resolved claims verified; 4 tracked)
  • VerifiedCapacity · claimed 2026-07-01
    Starship robots are 99% autonomous and operate at Level 4. They have completed over 10 million deliveries — millions more than any competitor

    10M+ deliveries confirmed on company website and press releases. 3,000+ robot fleet. 22M+ autonomous kilometers. "99% autonomous" means human intervention is needed for 1% of situations. This is the largest sidewalk delivery deployment by an order of magnitude. https://www.starship.xyz/press/autonomous-delivery-moves-into-the-mainstream-as-starship-technologies-passes-10-million-deliveries/

  • VerifiedCapacity · claimed 2026-06-01
    Autonomous Delivery Moves Into the Mainstream as Starship Technologies passes 10 million deliveries

    10M+ deliveries independently confirmed. 3,000+ robot fleet. 22M+ autonomous kilometers. "Mainstream" is supported by the scale — no competitor has more deliveries. https://www.starship.xyz/

  • VerifiedSafety · claimed 2026-06-01
    125,000+ road crossings every day

    125K+ daily road crossings by 3,000+ robots is a remarkable safety metric. No regulatory contradictions found. https://www.starship.xyz/

  • VerifiedCapacity · claimed 2026-03-01
    Starship Technologies Surpasses 8 Million Deliveries

    8M deliveries milestone passed in early 2026. Subsequently reached 10M. Growth trajectory is verified. https://www.instagram.com/p/DIi7s_SM2Ng/

Disagree with a status? Starship Technologies can submit a correction with evidence and we log the response on the record. Methodology and the full industry ledger live at /stats/claim-integrity.

Current leadership (2)

Founders (2)

See all founders across the registry →

Former / Previously (2)

Safety record

6 incidents on record (2 serious, 2 moderate, 1 minor). Most recent: Jul 2026.

serious
2
moderate
2
minor
1
Severity not classified
1
injury
4
other
1
property damage
1

Most recent: Jul 2026

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Incidents affecting Starship Technologies (6)

Includes incidents linked directly to this company, to its models, or to deployments of its models or under its operation. Retracted incidents are excluded from this view but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Operator customers (1)

Recent coverage

Starship Technologies in third-party press

Peer companies