{"id":18552,"date":"2024-02-07T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=18552"},"modified":"2024-02-07T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T01:30:00","slug":"the-estonian-delivery-robots-set-to-take-over-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=18552","title":{"rendered":"The Estonian delivery robots set to take over the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Investors continue to back Starship Technologies&#8217; global ambition to revolutionise last-mile delivery.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s fair to say that Estonians are proud of their country\u2019s reputation as a unicorn factory, home to more successful tech start-ups per capita than any other country in Europe. Rarely will a conversation pass without the names of at least a few Estonian-founded tech giants, from Skype to Bolt, Wise to Pipedrive, being casually dropped.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/news\/estonia-tops-future-of-emerging-europe-sustainability-index-but-the-whole-region-must-do-more-to-address-demographic-decline\/\">Estonia tops Future of Emerging Europe Sustainability Index<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/made-in-emerging-europe\/estonias-klaus-makes-regions-first-major-exit-of-2024\/\">Estonia\u2019s Klaus makes region\u2019s first major exit of 2024<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/news\/a-unique-expedition-to-save-the-baltic-sea\/\">A unique expedition to save the Baltic Sea<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Few Estonian start-ups however evoke more affection than Starship Technologies, which since 2014 has been developing autonomous delivery robots that are a feature of Tallinn\u2019s streets and can also be spotted in several other places around the world\u2014notably university campuses in the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen the snow is deep, they can sometimes get stuck. But people have made a habit of helping them on their way,\u201d says Liisa, a student at TalTech, Tallinn\u2019s University of Technology and alma mater of many of its most successful start-up founders and engineers.\u00a0&#8220;They&#8217;re like pets.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A pet but not yet a unicorn, Starship Technologies took a step towards becoming Estonia\u2019s next tech giant this week when it raised 90 million US dollars in a new funding round co-led by Tallinn-based Plural and Iconical. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new funding, which brings the total raised by Starship to 230 million US dollars, will be used to expand globally as the firm looks to take advantage of the unstoppable rise in demand for home deliveries. Companies including Bolt, Co-Op, Aramark, Sodexo, Chartwells and Grubhub already rely on Starship\u2019s robots to reach customers, and the firm says that it is now the world\u2019s leading autonomous delivery service, making more than six million deliveries and transforming last-mile delivery.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not science fiction&nbsp;<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAutonomous delivery isn\u2019t some science fiction concept from Bladerunner for decades in the future, it\u2019s a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day,\u201d says Ahti Heinla, Starship\u2019s co-founder and CEO and\u2014like so many Estonian entrepreneurs\u2014a former <a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/business\/why-skype-remains-key-to-estonias-digital-success\/\">Skype<\/a> engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBuilding a company like Starship takes at least a decade of perfecting the technology, streamlining operations and reducing costs to make last-mile autonomous delivery viable and sustainable at scale. Now we\u2019re ready to take on the world and with ambitions to build a category-dominating company that can change the daily lives of millions of people in thousands of locations worldwide.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last-mile and on-demand delivery, the most costly and carbon-intensive aspect of the supply chain, has been a stumbling block for logistics businesses across the world, yet demand is growing for rapid deliveries of food and other goods. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The online food delivery market in particular is expected to more than double by 2030, whilst the carbon emissions from last-mile delivery in Europe alone are expected to reach 5.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2032, the equivalent to 1.2 million gas-powered cars. Starship says it has created the most cost-effective, ethical and sustainable way to deliver goods directly to a customer over a short distance, solving the last-mile delivery industry\u2019s major challenges. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Built in emerging Europe\u00a0<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Investors appear to agree. Taavet Hinrikus, a co-founder of payments giant Wise, a partner at Plural and himself a former Skyper says that Starship is the global leader in autonomous technology, and that it is \u201cbuilt in Europe\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor the past 10 years, the team have been working tirelessly to build the most advanced autonomous logistics technology in the world, driving more miles and making more deliveries than any other company, whilst reducing the impact of last-mile and on-demand delivery on the planet,\u201d he says. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe culmination of this hard work over the past decade and this new funding means Starship is well-positioned for accelerated growth. We\u2019re looking forward to supporting Ahti and the team on this journey to becoming one of Europe\u2019s most successful global companies.\u201d &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, quite possibly, Estonia\u2019s next unicorn.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/round-black-and-blue-clock-tower-o9opbCZx2Os\">Photo: Starship Technologies<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Unlike many news and information platforms,&nbsp;<em>Emerging Europe<\/em>&nbsp;is free to read, and always will be.&nbsp;There is no paywall here.&nbsp;We are independent,&nbsp;not affiliated with nor representing any political party or business&nbsp;organisation.&nbsp;We want the very best for emerging Europe, nothing more, nothing less. Your support will help us continue to spread the word about this amazing region.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You can contribute&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/emergingeurope.krtra.com\/t\/NlQnFuOA2C9c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>. Thank you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/emergingeurope.krtra.com\/t\/NlQnFuOA2C9c\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/copy-of-add-a-heading.png\" alt=\"emerging europe support independent journalism\" class=\"wp-image-50811\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investors continue to back Starship Technologies&#8217; global ambition to revolutionise last-mile delivery. It\u2019s fair to say that Estonians are proud of their country\u2019s reputation as a<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[6833,6588,6320,6644,6832,6831,6830,6829,61],"class_list":["post-18552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-made-in-emerging-europe","tag-ahti-heinla","tag-estonia","tag-featured","tag-made-in-emerging-europe","tag-plural","tag-skype","tag-starship-technologies","tag-taavet-hinrikus","tag-technology-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}