When Walmart’s drone delivery network hit its one millionth package this spring, the company noted an odd detail buried in the numbers: a lot of the earliest orders weren’t urgent. Many customers’ first drone delivery was a single banana or snack food item, ordered just to watch a drone actually deliver it.
Drone delivery orders can be delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. The technology has evolved faster than almost anyone expected, and Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers are racing to make aerial delivery a normal part of how people shop.
Amazon’s Vertically Integrated Bet
Amazon recently announced it will expand Prime Air drone delivery to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026 — an increase from its current offering across eight states (and the UK). New markets in the pipeline include Chicago, Syracuse, Atlanta, and Boise. The qualifying catalog now spans groceries, electronics, cosmetics, medications, and household goods (essentially anything five pounds or under that fits in a large shoebox).
What sets Amazon apart from nearly every other player in this space is that it designs and manufactures its own drones rather than partnering with an outside aviation company. The current aircraft, the MK30, is built in-house in the United States and runs fully electrically. It carries a Detect-and-Avoid system that lets it make autonomous safety decisions in flight, including detecting and avoiding crewed aircraft that are not broadcasting their location, a key safety capability in low-altitude airspace where not all aircraft are required or choose to broadcast.
Amazon holds Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 certification, the same authorization commercial airlines operate under. It also has separate FAA approval to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), meaning a human pilot does not have to visually watch every drone in flight.
That combination of owning the hardware, the software, and the airline-grade certification is a meaningfully different strategy from the rest of the field, which has largely gone the partnership route.
Wing and Walmart: The Asset-Light Model
Alphabet’s drone unit, Wing, is pursuing the opposite playbook. Wing supplies the aircraft and flight operations while retailers like Walmart supply the demand and inventory.
Wing expanded drone delivery to another 150 Walmart stores in early 2026, reaching more than 40 million Americans, largely by targeting suburban and rural markets where airspace is simpler and space is more abundant than in dense urban cores.
Wing and Walmart have called it the largest drone delivery expansion in the world to date, with 270 additional locations planned for 2027 stretching from Los Angeles to Miami. For Walmart, the appeal of leaning on Wing instead of building its own fleet is speed to scale without the capital and regulatory burden of running an aviation operation.
The Rest of the Field
Amazon and Wing/Walmart are the two biggest programs, but they’re not alone:
Uber is partnering with Zipline to bring drone delivery to Uber Eats, starting in Houston and Dallas before the end of 2026 and expanding to dozens more cities after that. Uber expects to make one million Uber Eats drone deliveries per day by the end of 2029.
DoorDash has taken a more Amazon-like approach for a smaller player, launching an in-house drone delivery program after securing FAA certification rather than routing exclusively through a third-party operator, signaling it wants more control over the technology stack as the category matures. It’s also running a parallel partnership track: DoorDash and Flytrex launched drone delivery in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, a service already reaching over 30,000 households and logging more than 1,000 deliveries in its pilot phase.
And Manna, an Ireland-based drone delivery startup, is pushing into the U.S. after raising a $50 million Series B round to scale its network here, with early expansion into markets like Tulsa, Oklahoma.
How Consumers Actually Feel About It
Among actual users, satisfaction runs high. A DroneUp customer survey found a Net Promoter Score of 70 out of 100, with more than 90% giving positive marks on safe arrival, timely delivery, and accurate drop-off location, and over 98% satisfied with package condition on arrival.
Roughly 42% of respondents said they expected to use drone delivery daily or weekly going forward, and more than a third reported adding extra items to their cart once they realized drone delivery was an option, suggesting the format can actually grow order size.
Broader public opinion is more cautious but trending positive. McKinsey’s global survey work found that in 2024, 76% of respondents worldwide would consider switching to drone delivery, up sharply from 57% in 2021, and 58% said they’d pay a premium for it for the speed. U.S. willingness lags the global figure at 53%, with hesitation around safety and privacy near homes. But people who haven’t seen a drone delivery are more skeptical than people who have.
What’s Possible for Smaller Retailers
The infrastructure question that used to gatekeep drone delivery to only the biggest players is starting to loosen. Independent restaurants and regional chains are getting access to the same drone networks Walmart and Amazon use, without having to build or operate anything themselves.
Flytrex’s partnership with Little Caesars plugs directly into the restaurant’s existing point-of-sale system, with the drone handling remote pickup from outside the store.
The DoorDash-Flytrex rollout in Dallas-Fort Worth works the same way: local merchants like The Brass Tap reach drone customers simply by being on the DoorDash platform.
That marketplace model is the more realistic path for most small and mid-size retailers in the near term. Plugging into an existing network appears to ask little of the merchant beyond an integration with their ongoing system.
What Retail Should Expect Next
Two competing models are emerging at the top of the market: retailers owning the entire stack (manufacturing, flight operations, and FAA certification) versus retailers outsourcing to drone services in an ongoing partnership format.
The near-term signals to watch are consumer trust and the Department of Transportation (DOT) and FAA’s current finalization of rules for commercial use of beyond visual line of sight operations (BVLOS). This will transition drone delivery operations from Part 135 to Part 108 operations, streamlining approvals and authorizations, and moving away from the waiver/exemption framework drone delivery currently operates under. The next 12 to 18 months will determine whether drone delivery becomes a genuine share of everyday retail fulfillment or remains a niche channel layered on top of traditional last-mile delivery.
Image via Unsplash.