Robot Delivery Startup Starship Secures $100M in 30 Days

Robotic delivery startup Starship Technologies raised a total of $100 million in the past 30 days, including a $42 million Series B funding round, as demand soars for its autonomous delivery services.

The Series B was led by NordicNinja and Taavet+Sten, with participation from TDK Ventures and Goodyear. The fresh capital be earmarked for expansion plans into new cities in North America and Europe, including more U.S. university campuses. A portion of the funds is immediately being donated to the Red Cross in Ukraine.

With January’s $57 million backing from the European Investment Bank (EIB), Starship has doubled its funding since launching, bringing the total raised to $202 million, according to a press release on Tuesday (March 1).

See also: Starship Raises $17 Million To Develop Driverless Delivery Robots

“Everyone is talking about how to fix the issues with last-mile delivery,” said Shinichi Nikkuni, managing partner of NordicNinja VC. “Time and again, Starship has proven itself to be years ahead of others with world-leading autonomous driving technology for sidewalk delivery, leading to accumulating more and more data and experiences through much wider commercial operations.”

Founded in Tallinn, Estonia, and launched in 2014 by CTO Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, Starship is headquartered in Silicon Valley, has engineering operations in Tallinn and Helsinki and operates offices in London, Germany and Washington, D.C.

Last year, Starship tripled deliveries as the autonomous delivery industry expanded to meet demand. The autonomous delivery robot market is forecast to reach $55 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 20.4%, according to Facts & Factors.

Read more: White Castle Turns to Robotics to Meet Rising Order Demand

“We know this industry inside out, because we invented it,” said Heinla. “So many unexpected things have happened to get us where we are today, but I think we can all agree that on-demand services are mainstream and not going away anytime soon. While other companies in this space are busy making claims, we are gladly very busy making thousands of autonomous deliveries every day and improving the efficiency of our service.”