Keller Rinaudo

CEO & Co-Founder, Zipline

Search every verified Keller Rinaudo interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, has been discussing the company's expansion and the economics of drone delivery. In December 2025, Zipline announced a $550 million partnership with the U.S. State Department to expand its delivery service across countries where it already operates. Cliffton said the U.S. was seeking new ways to engage in these countries and help save lives while accelerating local economies and benefiting the U.S. economically. He also stated that the fully burdened unit economics of Zipline's systems are falling below the cost of using cars for deliveries, a shift he described as happening "quietly" in the summer of 2026. Cliffton has emphasized that Zipline's drone is only about 15% of its autonomous delivery system, with the rest encompassing inventory management, air traffic integration, and engineering systems such as a dual flight computer failover protocol. He noted that Zipline has flown 140 million autonomous miles with zero safety incidents. Cliffton has also described the company's goal as approximating teleportation, saying that if a logistics system automated delivery and reduced the cost to near zero, it would fundamentally change how people live. He projected that Zipline expects to grow to a million deliveries a day in the next couple of years, while noting that even at that scale, the company would still serve a tiny percentage of the overall market.