Estonian delivery robot company Starship Technologies announced today that it has raised $90 million in funding, co-led by Plural and Iconical. Launched in 2014, Starship's delivery robots have become a common sight on the streets of Europe and the United States, and the company is now the world's leading autonomous delivery service with more than 6 million deliveries, transforming last-mile delivery.

In 80 locations around the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Finland, these robots use less energy than humans to deliver takeout, grocery orders, tools and company documents to customers' doorsteps.

These delivery robots have traveled more than 11 million miles around the world and completed more than 6 million autonomous deliveries. Starship was founded by Janus Friis (Skype co-founder) and Ahti Heinla (Skype chief architect), who is also the company's CEO.

Last-mile delivery and on-demand delivery are the most costly and carbon-intensive links in the supply chain and have always been a stumbling block for global logistics companies.

To do this, Starship has created one of the most cost-effective, ethical and sustainable short-distance direct delivery methods, solving a major challenge facing the last-mile delivery industry.

Each Starship robot can run for 18 hours when fully charged, and the energy required to deliver an average cargo is only equivalent to boiling a kettle to make a cup of tea. Since its launch, Starship robots have reduced CO2 emissions by nearly 1.8 million kilograms.

Additionally, by using robots rather than low-paid humans to weave through traffic, the company has created a more ethical and sustainable business, with clients including Bolt, Co-Op, Grubhub and Sodexo.

The robots operate autonomously with a reliability level of up to 99% and can safely navigate a variety of difficult situations and obstacles, including snow, rocky terrain and obstructions in their path.

It took Starship six years to complete one million deliveries, and half that time to complete the next five million deliveries.

Recently, Starship launched groundbreaking wireless charging technology for robots at George Mason University in the United States. In a world first, Starship robots can now charge autonomously and wirelessly between deliveries.

Starship plans to launch the wireless charging solution globally in the coming months, further improving the efficiency of the last-mile delivery process and realizing its vision of creating a fully autonomous system that is easy to deploy at scale.

Over the past decade, Starship has created a world-class team of engineers, data scientists, designers and operations experts driving the development of a new world of sustainable autonomous logistics.

Its team members are located at its founding offices in Tallinn, Estonia, global headquarters in San Francisco, and across the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland and Germany.

Ahti Heinla, co-founder and CEO of Starship Technologies, said:

Autonomous delivery is not a sci-fi concept decades in the future in "Bladerunner" but a reality for thousands of people every day.

To build a company like Starship, it will take at least a decade to perfect the technology, streamline operations, and reduce costs to make last-mile autonomous delivery feasible and sustainable at scale.

Now, we are ready to face the world, with the ambition to build a category-leading company that will change the daily lives of millions of people in hundreds of thousands of places around the world.

Plural partner Taavet Hinrikus said:

Starship is a global leader in autonomous technology, built in Europe.

Over the past decade, the team has worked tirelessly to build the world's most advanced autonomous logistics technology, driving more miles and delivering more goods than any other company, while reducing the impact of last-mile delivery and on-demand delivery on the planet.

The culmination of the past decade of hard work and this new funding means Starship is well-positioned to accelerate growth.

We look forward to supporting Ahti and its team in becoming one of Europe's most successful global companies.

The new round of investment brings Starship’s total funding to $230 million and will enable Starship to leverage continued advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to further develop its artificial intelligence, technology and wireless charging infrastructure while expanding into more international markets, particularly through its Delivery as a Service (DaaS) offering, where Starship robots will be integrated into its partners’ delivery infrastructure.