U.S. autonomous drone delivery and logistics startup Zipline said Wednesday it will set up operations in Houston and Phoenix early this year, as part of an expansion that will be propelled by $600 million in fresh investment. The round, which values the company at $7.6 billion, will be used to expand to at least four U.S. states in 2026, the company said. Several existing and new investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, and Tiger Global participated in the funding round. Founded in 2014, Zipline developed its own drone delivery ecosystem, including the logistics software, launch and landing systems, and the aircraft. The company got its commercial start in 2016 using its autonomous drones to deliver blood in Rwanda. Today, Zipline's drones deliver food, retail, agriculture, and health products in five African countries, several cities in the United States, and Japan. Last year, Zipline launched a home delivery service in the U.S. that lets customers order food and retail goods via an app. The home delivery service uses Zipline's Platform 2 drones, which are designed to carry up to eight pounds and travel to customers within a 10-mile radius. Its larger Platform 1 drones are used for long-range deliveries for enterprise, business, and government that can cover 120 miles round trip. The P2 platform started in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with Walmart, and more than a dozen restaurant brands, according to Zipline....
Robert Liebeck, a professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and one of the world's leading experts on aircraft design, aerodynamics, and hydrodynamics, died on Jan. 12 at age 87. 'Bob was a mentor and dear friend to so many faculty, alumni, and researchers at AeroAstro over the course of 25 years,' says Julie Shah, department head and the H.N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. 'He'll be deeply missed by all who were fortunate enough to know him.' Liebeck's long and distinguished career in aerospace engineering included a number of foundational contributions to aerodynamics and aircraft design, beginning with his graduate research into high-lift airfoils. His novel designs came to be known as 'Liebeck airfoils' and are used primarily for high-altitude reconnaissance airplanes; Liebeck airfoils have also been adapted for use in Formula One racing cars, racing sailboats, and even a flying replica of a giant pterosaur. He was perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work on blended wing body (BWB) aircraft. He oversaw the BWB project at Boeing during his celebrated five-decade tenure at the company, working closely with NASA on the X-48 experimental aircraft. After retiring as senior technical fellow at Boeing in 2020, Liebeck remained active in BWB research. He served as technical advisor at BWB startup JetZero, which is aiming to build a more fuel-efficient aircraft for both military and commercial use and has set a target date of 2027 for its demonstration flight....
The pace of big funding rounds continued to hold up at brisk levels this past week, led by a $1.4 billion financing for 'robot brain' developer Skild AI. More big rounds went to startups in sectors including AI chips, brain-computer interfaces, defense tech, biotech and airplanes, among others. 1. Skild AI, $1.4B, robotics: Skild AI, a robotics company building an 'omni-bodied' brain to operate any robot for any task, announced it raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion. SoftBank Group led the Pittsburgh-based startup's latest financing, which comes just over seven months after it raised a Series B at a $4.5 billion valuation. 2. Etched.ai, $500M, AI and semiconductors: Etched.ai, a startup working on chips for AI superintelligence, reportedly secured $500 million in new funding. Stripes led the financing, which was said to set a $5 billion valuation for the Silicon Valley-based company. 3. Merge Labs, $252M, brain-computer interfaces: Merge Labs, a Sam Altman-founded startup based in San Francisco, which is working on brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth and integrate with advanced AI, reportedly locked up a $252 million seed round. According to reports, OpenAI was the largest backer....
In early December, as U.S. forces prepared for a possible attack on Venezuela, a Chinese navy ship sailed near the American armada gathered in the Caribbean. The CNS Silk Road Ark, a massive vessel in China's South Sea Fleet, didn't pose much of a threat to the U.S. warships. But its appearance in the waters near Venezuela presented exactly the kind of split screen Beijing wanted the nations of Latin America to see. On one side were the Americans, their ships loaded with missiles and aircraft that had already killed dozens of alleged drug smugglers in strikes on small boats. The U.S. arsenal would soon be used to storm Venezuela's capital and capture its president, Nicolas Maduro. On the other was a floating military hospital on a mission to provide free medical care to thousands of people in the region and, along the way, to burnish China's image as a better partner than the United States. Cultivating that image has long been central to Xi Jinping's strategy in Latin America, and the U.S. raid on Caracas may have made that job easier by allowing him to contrast Chinese investments with American intimidation. Since Xi took power, in 2013, China has dished out an impressive slate of business deals, aid packages, loans, and infrastructure projects across the Western Hemisphere. But the U.S. now wants to unravel that network of relationships, starting with Venezuela....
