DoorDash’s drone strategy started on the ground
When DoorDash set out to build a drone delivery business, it started with the tricky logistics that happen on the ground before it looked up.
The autonomous drone came last, according to the company, which unveiled its new six-propeller aircraft at its annual Dash Forward 2026 event on Wednesday.
Before DoorDash worked on the aircraft, the company focused on ground infrastructure, including loading systems, how food would be handed off from a restaurant’s kitchen, and packaging.
DoorDash Labs, the R&D team that built its autonomous sidewalk delivery bot Dot, created the drone delivery service now called DoorDash Air. The same team also developed the underlying software, called the Autonomous Delivery Platform (ADP), to handle the coordination challenges in deliveries handled by humans, sidewalk delivery bots, and now drones.
The ADP software uses smart routing, incorporating factors like weather, flight range, and ground traffic to narrow down which orders actually...
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