The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 44 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Cliffton: Low-altitude octocopter drone deliveries are terrifying 'lawnmowers of death'
“You're, like, descending this massive octocopter of, you know, sounds like a lawnmower of death to within, like, you know, 20 feet of you. It's like, you know, you're like, it's incredibly loud, incredibly scary. It's actually super dangerous to have an aircra…”
Cliffton: Zipline has a clear path to a trillion-dollar valuation
“Has wound up being one of the biggest markets on Earth that means that, You know, we suddenly have a company that you know, is highly valued by investors and has a pretty much like straight and obvious path to becoming a trillion dollar.”
Cliffton: The total instant delivery market is 10x today's size
“We need to prepare for actually 10 times the size of the mark, the total instant delivery market today. We actually think that the total size of that market is 10 times what we're observing today.”
Cliffton: Most aviation and aerospace companies have really bad cultures
“When it comes to aviation, aerospace, there aren't that many companies to look up to, unfortunately. Like most of these companies are, have really bad cultures.”
Cliffton: New Zipline sites reach 100 daily deliveries in two days
“So, you know, it took us it took us, I think, about a 110 days to get our first site to a hundred deliveries a day. We now have sites that hit a hundred deliveries a day in two days.”
Cliffton: FAA approved Zipline for 1 human per 30 autonomous aircraft
“We've just been approved by the FAA to now fly one human to 30 aircraft.”
Cliffton: Over 50% of households order via Zipline in some cities
“In some cities we have over 50% of homes ordering from Zipline.”
Cliffton: Zipline has 140M autonomous commercial miles with zero safety incidents
“You know, Zipline has a hundred and forty million commercial autonomous miles with zero safety incidents.”
Cliffton: Zipline's Dallas ordering rates imply 50B US deliveries annually
“The crazy thing is that the data that Zipline is currently seeing in Dallas, that the frequency of customer ordering, if you were to apply that just to the rest of the US, there would be fifty billion instant deliveries happening in the US every year.”
Cliffton: Zipline is largest autonomous system on Earth with 140M miles
“Zipline has now crossed a hundred and forty million commercial autonomous miles, which makes it the largest commercial autonomous system on earth, ground or air.”
Rinaudo: African Nations Fund Majority of CapEx and OpEx in Zipline Expansion
“The countries themselves are committing an overwhelming majority of the CapEx and OpEx to make this happen. So the U.S. Is, like, incentivizing it and subsidizing it and accelerating it, but the countries themselves are putting, you know, they're putting their…”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline Logged 100M+ Autonomous Miles With Zero Safety Incidents
“After, you know, achieving over a hundred million commercial autonomous miles with zero safety incidents, we were able to bring that data to the FAA and get unprecedented regulatory approvals in the U.S.”
Cliffton: Zipline cuts maternal mortality by 51%+ in operating countries
“The company saves about 17,000 lives a year, and the majority of those are moms and kids. You know, when you look at the statistics, we've been able to reduce maternal mortality by 51% or more in a lot of the countries that we operate by making a lot of produc…”
Cliffton: Zipline expects US delivery business to grow over 10x this year
“So that grew really fast, and we're expecting that business to grow by more than 10 X this year again.”
Cliffton: Zipline Will Scale to 1M Deliveries Daily in Next Few Years
“You know, Zipline is gonna scale to a million deliveries a day over the next couple years, and that is gonna require us to continue that rate of, like, 15% week-over-week growth for another several years straight, and that's so we're not currently looking to, …”
Cliffton: Zipline now does more deliveries in the US than worldwide combined
“We had almost no operations in the U.S. At the beginning of last year, and we have now expanded to the point where Zipline actually does more deliveries in the U.S. Than it does in the rest of the world combined.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Automated logistics will produce one of Earth's biggest companies
“We've just had this really clear conviction that automated logistics is inevitable, and that someone's going to build one of the biggest companies on Earth, focusing on making logistics universally accessible to everyone.”
Zipline closes over $625M in new funding to accelerate expansion
“Yeah, I mean, you know, we, Zipline just closed over six hundred twenty-five million dollars which is going to accelerate our expansion both in the United States and outside the US.”
Zipline used its Rwanda drone delivery safety records to win US approval
“The whole idea was we're going to go out to Rwanda. We're going to prove out that we can do this. And then we can bring back all of the safety records to the U S and eventually be allowed to fly in the U S which is what has happened now.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline builds its entire manufacturing software from scratch
“All of Zipline's manufacturing software system is also gulf on scratch by Zipline.”
Cliffton: Zipline is severely supply constrained and struggling with demand
“Right now, we are like severely supply constrained, you know, we need people only ordering what they definitely need, because right now the system is struggling to keep up with demand.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline is growing delivery volume 15% week-over-week
“It's kind of insane, you know, just getting to watch, like, the CCTV, and by the way, the system's growing 15% week over week, so it's, you know,”
Cliffton: Over half of US Zipline deliveries occurred in past 30 days
“Of all of the deliveries that we've done in the United States, more than half of them were done in the last 30 days.”
Cliffton: Autonomous delivery will operate 24/7 like the internet
“Outside the US, we operate 24 seven. We expect to soon be operating 24 seven in the US. These kinds of systems are gonna feel more like the internet than like UPS.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline's newest drone costs half as much and lasts multiples longer
“That aircraft is, like, tremendous performance improvements relative to the last version. It will last several multiples longer in terms of total lifetime cycles. It's also half the cost. Relative to the aircraft that we were building last year.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Hardware engineering and manufacturing must be co-located on the line
“Generally you want engineering and manufacturing co-located. You need manufacturing engineers, mechanical engineers, even software engineers to be able to sit on the line with the manufacturing team to make sure that you're actually building a good product, an…”
Zipline will expand to serve over 20,000 healthcare facilities within 18 months
“We're gonna go from serving about 5000 hospitals and health facilities To over 20,000 hospitals and health facilities in the next 18 months.”
Cliffton: Zipline delivers nearly 100,000 SKUs from Walmart Supercenters
“We now deliver almost a 100,000 SKUs for a Walmart Supercenter of I think the a 110 to a 120,000 total SKUs in that store.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Valor, and Tiger led Zipline's round
“The largest investors in this round were Fidelity Capital Group Bailey Gifford Valor, and Tiger.”
Cliffton: Zipline will launch Houston and Phoenix within four months
“We're launching Houston and then Phoenix over the next three to four months, and then we're going to begin launching multiple metros every quarter thereafter.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline will cross 2M deliveries in 3–4 days
“We're just about to cross two million total deliveries. Yeah, that'll probably happen in the next three or four days.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline designs custom electric motors and powertrain components in-house
“Yeah, a lot of the powertrain teams are designing everything from battery management systems to the flight computer to the power distribution boards and we actually design the electric motors from scratch.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline plans to transition site operations to 24/7
“We're operating sites about 17 hours a day. We're soon gonna transition into 20, 24 seven.”
Cliffton: Zipline employs 1,300 people globally, with 800 US staff mostly engineers
“Zipline is about 1300 people. We're about 800 people in the U.S., and more than half of those people are engineers.”
Cliffton: Zipline operates about 20 sites in Dallas alone
“Zipline is now operating about 20 sites in Dallas alone.”
Cliffton: Zipline turned off paid ads due to viral TikTok traction
“This is one of the reasons we've been able to turn off all started, because this is viral. It makes for really good TikTok content.”
Zipline partners include Walmart, Chipotle, Sweetgreen, Wendy's, and Cleveland Clinic
“Zipline works with amazing global brands like Walmart, Chipotle, Sweetgreen, Mendocino Farms, Wendy's, Buffalo Wild Wings, many, many others. We all also this year are launching our healthcare business in the US. We're partnered with folks like Cleveland Clini…”
A Dallas customer ordered from Zipline 350 times in one year
“And so we have, you know, I visited a grandma in Dallas a couple weeks ago who's ordered from Zipline 350 times in the last year.”
Rinaudo Cliffton: Zipline launches new aircraft generations every 9 to 12 months
“Right now we are launching new generations of aircraft every nine to 12 months.”
Cliffton: Most Zipline prescription delivery users are new pharmacy customers
“The vast majority of people signing up and, ah, receiving those prescriptions had never placed a, ah, prescription with that pharmacy before.”
Zipline shut off all marketing in mid-2024 due to high demand
“Yeah, it's true that we had to basically like shut off all marketing. That happened in like June or July.”
Zipline originally built an unsticky smartphone-powered toy robot
“Zipline, they started out with this idea of building a mobile platform for robotics where the iPhone was going to be the brains. And what they ended up with was what Keller would say was kind of like a toy and people would play with it. They had fun with it. A…”
Zipline built its first drones on an active cattle ranch
“When we were originally, you know, building the company, we wanted engineering, manufacturing, and flight test to all be in the same place. And so we ended up renting a huge amount of land which was like an active cattle ranch. And we ended up building our ori…”
Cliffton: Zipline pitches hospitals on drone delivery as an outdoor pneumatic tube
“That's exactly how we describe this product to hospital systems that we're working with. Because they used to have those systems, and they would basically walk to a wall, they'd put something, and they'd stick it in a tube, and it'd instantly be teleported som…”