DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business - TechCrunch

What the report says

TechCrunch reports that DoorDash is creating an in-house drone delivery operation called DoorDash Air after securing Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The approval permits DoorDash to run a commercial drone delivery service in the United States, but the company has not announced when its own aircraft will begin carrying orders through the DoorDash app.

According to TechCrunch, the rollout is expected to be gradual rather than immediate. Early activity would likely involve small pilot programs in which drones fly short routes while staying within an operator’s visual line of sight. For longer-range autonomous flights, DoorDash would still need FAA approval for Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations, a regulatory step already obtained by some drone delivery rivals and partners, including Amazon, Wing and Zipline.

DoorDash is not abandoning existing drone partnerships. TechCrunch notes that the company began working with Alphabet’s Wing in Australia in 2022 and later expanded that arrangement to U.S. markets, including Dallas-Fort Worth in 2024. It is also maintaining a relationship with Flytrex. The new DoorDash Air effort was built inside DoorDash Labs, the company’s research and development group behind Dot, an autonomous sidewalk delivery robot operating in parts of the Phoenix area and in Fremont, California.

The move matters because DoorDash is positioning drones, sidewalk robots and human couriers as parts of one delivery network. In a blog post cited by TechCrunch, co-founder and chief product officer Stanley Tang said the company is focused on matching delivery problems to the right mode of transport. DoorDash says its Autonomous Delivery Platform is intended to coordinate those choices across drivers, robots and, eventually, drones.