U.S. Autonomous Last Mile Delivery Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By End-User (Food, Retail & E-Commerce, Healthcare, and Others), By Vehicle Type (Aerial Delivery Drones, Ground Delivery Bots, and Self Driving Trucks & Vans), By Range (Short-Range and Long-Range), By Application (B2B and B2C), and Country Forecast, 2026-2034

The U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market size was valued at USD 22.6 million in 2025. The market is projected to grow from USD 24.5 million in 2026 to USD 67.7 million by 2034, exhibiting a CAGR of 13.6% during the forecast period.

Autonomous last mile delivery refers to the use of self-navigating vehicles, such as drones, sidewalk delivery robots, and autonomous trucks or vans, to transport goods from a local hub, store, or distribution point to the final customer without the need for human drivers or couriers. These systems rely on advanced sensors, machine learning, AI powered navigation, remote supervision, and automated dispatching to complete short-distance, on-demand deliveries. The technology aims to reduce delivery time, lower operational costs, overcome labor shortages, and support continuous, high-frequency fulfillment for food, retail, medical, and e-commerce applications.

The U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market demand is evolving rapidly as retailers, food-delivery platforms, and healthcare systems adopt autonomous ground robots, aerial drones, and self-driving delivery vehicles for short-distance and local logistics. This growth is driven by rising demand for faster delivery, increasing urban congestion, labor shortages in the courier services sector, and the expansion of pilot programs across campuses, cities, and retail networks. The ecosystem includes leading players such as Starship Technologies, Serve Robotics, Kiwibot, Cartken, Coco, Avride, and Zipline. These companies collectively enable high-frequency, automated delivery across diverse U.S. and North America.

U.S. tariffs influence the market primarily through their effect on the cost of imported components such as batteries, motors, sensors, processors, and robotics-grade electronics, many of which originate from Asia. Higher tariffs raise hardware acquisition and replacement costs for drones, sidewalk robots, and autonomous vehicle platforms, affecting operational economics for service providers. Tariff volatility also impacts supply-chain planning, encourages domestic component sourcing, and affects the pace of fleet expansion. Despite these pressures, strong retailer and platform adoption continues to support long-term market development.

MARKET DYNAMICS

MARKET DRIVERS

Growth of On-Demand E-Commerce and Labor Constraints Accelerates Market Expansion

Rising U.S. consumer expectations for instant gratification, free shipping, and precise ETAs are prompting retailers, grocers, and restaurants to reassess their strategies for serving dense urban neighborhoods and university campuses, which is sharply increasing and driving the autonomous last mile delivery. E-commerce has moved from a niche to a mainstream market. U.S. Census data indicate that by Q2 2025, e-commerce accounted for over 16% of total retail sales, with online sales reaching approximately USD 293 billion that quarter alone. Additionally, Q4 2024 e-commerce sales topped USD 308.9 billion. 

As order volumes rise, the traditional human-driver model faces structural limitations, including driver availability, rising wages, fuel and insurance costs, and congestion constraints, making it increasingly difficult to support rapid delivery windows across peak periods profitably. 

Sidewalk robots, small autonomous delivery vehicles, and delivery drones offer a way to decouple marginal delivery cost from driver labor, especially for short-distance food, grocery, and convenience deliveries that cluster around campuses, downtown districts, and suburban hubs. Operators can dynamically deploy fleets to match fluctuating local demand without needing to recruit equivalent numbers of drivers. Retailers can offer consistent service later into the evening or during adverse weather conditions, when human couriers are more expensive or scarce. 

Early deployments on U.S. campuses have demonstrated that students and staff rapidly adopt robot delivery as part of their daily routines. At the same time, sidewalk-robot specialist Serve Robotics reports commercial deliveries for partners such as Uber Eats and 7-Eleven and has deployed around 1,000 robots across multiple cities. They have multi-year agreements to scale to 2,000 units, highlighting that major improve delivery platforms view automation as a practical lever to handle growing order volumes while aiming to reduce per-order labor cost. 

MARKET RESTRAINTS

Fragmented Regulatory, Safety, and Liability Frameworks to Restrain the Market Growth

Complex, evolving rules surrounding road-going robots, sidewalk devices, and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) remain a significant barrier to the rapid scaling of autonomous last-mile providers within the U.S., creating uncertainty over deployment timelines, allowable use cases, and risk allocation among technology providers, logistics partners, and municipalities. For drones, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently treats commercial package delivery as an airline-like service under Part 135, requiring operators to obtain certificates and comply with strict safety, environmental, and airspace rules. This protects the national airspace, but it also forces companies to navigate lengthy and costly approval processes before serving new communities or expanding routes. 

Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, critical for economically viable drone delivery at scale, have historically been permitted mainly through waivers or exemptions, which limit automation to carefully controlled pilots rather than nationwide networks. A 2025 U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General report notes that while interest in BVLOS is expanding rapidly, the FAA must still finalize performance-based regulations and address gaps in risk assessment and oversight before widespread BVLOS commerce can proceed. 

In August 2025, the FAA issued a BVLOS-focused Notice of Proposed Rulemaking intended to normalize low-altitude operations and third-party services such as Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM). However, until this proposal is finalized and implemented, providers still face legal ambiguity and reliance on case-by-case approvals. This hinders the U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market growth.

MARKET OPPORTUNITIES

Expansion of Autonomous Delivery into Healthcare, Pharmacy, and Critical Supplies Creates High-Value Growth Niches

Healthcare and pharmacy logistics represent a particularly attractive growth frontier for U.S. autonomous last-mile players. This is due to the high value placed on the rapid and reliable delivery of medicines, lab samples, and home-care equipment. Customers are relatively price-insensitive for urgent or chronic-care use cases, and policymakers tend to support carefully controlled deployments that improve public health outcomes. 

Unlike restaurant meals or general e-commerce parcels, time-sensitive medical payloads such as blood products, vaccines, lab specimens, or home-care drugs can justify premium pricing and dedicated infrastructure. This is vital if automation materially improves access and reliability, especially for rural or mobility-constrained populations. Drones can bypass congestion and difficult terrain to link hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and patient homes. 

At the same time, small sidewalk or road-going robots can handle the last mile within the neighborhood leg, such as from a local pharmacy or micro-fulfillment center. These networks are being integrated into mainstream healthcare workflows. For instance, Mayo Clinic’s Advanced Care at Home program has utilized Zipline’s Platform 2 drones to deliver medications and supplies to thousands of patients, demonstrating how autonomy can extend hospital-level care into the home while reducing dependence on traditional couriers.

U.S. AUTONOMOUS LAST MILE DELIVERY MARKET TRENDS

Ecosystem Partnerships and Multi-Modal Automation Are Reshaping U.S. Autonomous Last Mile Strategies

Strategic partnerships between delivery platforms, retailers, and specialized autonomy providers, spanning sidewalk robots, road vehicles, and drones, are emerging as a major U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market trends. As companies converge on multi-modal, ecosystem-based strategies rather than betting on a single technology or a vertically integrated model, these partnerships are becoming increasingly important. Large food-delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats and DoorDash, increasingly view automation as a key portfolio capability. They can route certain short-distance, low-payload orders to sidewalk robots, assign denser urban routes to compact road-going AVs, and use drones for real time sensitive deliveries or hard-to-reach suburbs, all orchestrated through their existing customer apps and dispatch algorithms. 

Partnerships reduce risk by allowing platforms to experiment with different hardware providers, while giving robotics and drone companies access to large order pools, brand recognition, and established merchant relationships. Serve Robotics exemplifies this shift. Initially spun out of Uber, it has completed deliveries for Uber Eats and 7-Eleven in cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and Miami. Moreover, it collaborated with Wing on drone-supported restaurant deliveries in the Dallas area, creating hybrid ground-and-air networks. 

In October 2025, Serve announced a new partnership with DoorDash, expanding from its earlier Uber-exclusive relationship to deploy its 1,000-strong robot fleet on the DoorDash platform starting in Los Angeles, with further U.S. cities to follow. This move enables Serve to tap into a larger customer base while helping DoorDash introduce lower-cost delivery modes and diversify beyond human couriers. 

Segmentation Analysis

By End-User 

Rising Meal-Delivery Volumes and Labor Pressures Accelerate Food Segment Growth

By end-user, the market is classified into food, retail & e-commerce, healthcare, and others.

Food is the most dominant and visible use case, driving high-frequency, small-ticket autonomous deliveries that prove reliability and customer acceptance. Restaurants and QSRs face intense labor pressure and tight delivery economics; robots and drones help reduce courier costs and shrink delivery times, improving margins and customer satisfaction. As food platforms embed autonomous options directly into ordering apps, usage grows without requiring behavioral change, which in turn normalizes autonomous last-mile delivery for other categories. In May 2025, Robot.com deployed autonomous food and beverage delivery robots at Harbor Links Golf Course in New York, showcasing new hospitality use cases.

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The retail & e-commerce segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19.9% over the forecast period.

By Vehicle Type 

Dense Urban and Campus Networks Favor Rapid Expansion of Ground Delivery Bots Segment

By vehicle type, the market is segmented into aerial delivery drones, ground delivery bots, and self-driving trucks & vans.

Ground delivery bots dominated the market for the U.S. autonomous last mile delivery, as they support dense, short-range routes, particularly in areas with sidewalks, campuses, and mixed-use neighborhoods. Their low delivery speeds, small footprint, and electric drivetrains make them ideal for replacing short car trips, cutting delivery costs for restaurants and convenience outlets while avoiding drone airspace constraints. As cities and campuses normalize sidewalk robots, order density rises, improving fleet utilization and encouraging food platforms to integrate robots as a standard logistics mode, which broadens the U.S. autonomous last-mile market. In April 2025, DoorDash and Coco expanded sidewalk-robot deliveries for nearly 600 merchants in Los Angeles and Chicago, boosting automated food-delivery volumes.

The aerial delivery drone segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.2% over the forecast period.

By Range

High-Frequency Local Routes Strengthen Dominance of Short Range Segment

By range, the market is segregated into short-range and long-range.

Short-range autonomous delivery held the largest U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market share. It focuses on campus, neighborhood, and intra-facility routes, typically within a 1–3 mile radius. Sidewalk robots and low-altitude drones thrive here, as they can complete multiple trips per hour with minimal energy consumption, making economics attractive for food, convenience, and micro-e-commerce deliveries. As more urban cores pilot geofenced zones for robots and rooftop drone pads, short-range autonomy becomes an everyday sight, directly accelerating market acceptance and generating dense operational data.

The long range segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21.5% over the forecast period.

By Application

Consumer-Facing Fulfillment Channels Propel B2C as the Leading Application Segment

By application, the market is bifurcated into B2B and B2C.

B2C is currently the dominant visible segment, encompassing direct deliveries of meals, groceries, parcels, and medicines to homes, apartments, and dorms. Its growth drives brand recognition, consumer acceptance, and political visibility for autonomous systems in the U.S. Repeated, convenient B2C experiences build trust and normalize robots and drones as everyday utilities. In October 2024, Matternet launched Silicon Valley’s first consumer drone delivery service in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, offering residents ultra-fast, zero-emission deliveries directly to their doorsteps.

The B2B segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.9% over the forecast period.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Key Industry Players

Proliferation of Multi-Modal Delivery Fleets and Rapid Retail Partnerships Strengthen Competitive Differentiation Among U.S. ALMD Players

Rapid multi-modal expansion, platform integrations, and aggressive retail collaborations are shaping the U.S. autonomous last mile delivery landscape. Starship, Serve Robotics, Kiwibot, Cartken, Coco, and Avride dominate short-range robot fleets across campuses and urban corridors, while Zipline, Wing, Flytrex, DroneUp, Amazon Prime Air, and Matternet scale drone operations with major retailers and healthcare networks. Nuro, Gatik, Waymo, and UPS Flight Forward enhance capacity through the use of autonomous vans, box trucks, and medical corridors. Competition is increasingly shifting toward reliability, geographic coverage, AI-driven fleet optimization, and real-time integration with the ecosystem of Walmart, Amazon, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

Major U.S. autonomous last mile delivery players are converging on hybrid fleets, deeper retail integration, and scalable automation. Starship and Serve are expanding dense robot networks, improving utilization and reducing cost per delivery. Zipline, Wing, and Flytrex focus on precision, BVLOS expansion, and healthcare retail corridors. Amazon Prime Air accelerates e-commerce drone adoption, while Gatik and Nuro strengthen driverless middle-mile links. The shared trend is clear: operators are transitioning from pilot-heavy deployments to multi-city, revenue-generating networks integrated directly into consumer and retail platforms.

LIST OF KEY U.S. AUTONOMOUS LAST MILE DELIVERY COMPANIES PROFILED

• Starship Technologies (U.S.)
• Nuro (U.S.)
• Serve Robotics Inc. (U.S.)
• Kiwibot (Robot.com) (U.S.)
• Coco Robotics (U.S.)
• Zipline (U.S.)
• Wing (U.S.)
• DroneUp, LLC. (U.S.)
• Matternet (U.S.)
• Cartken Inc. (U.S.)

KEY INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS

• In November 2025, Zipline, in partnership with Walmart, expanded its drone-delivery network in Texas by launching services from a Walmart Supercenter in McKinney, approximately 40 miles north of Dallas, and announced an upcoming launch in Red Oak, a suburb south of Dallas. This marks the 15th city in the greater DFW region to be covered under their joint drone-delivery program, utilizing Zipline’s dual-vehicle Zip + Droid system.
• In October 2025, Starship raised USD 50 million in a Series C funding round to accelerate expansion into the U.S. cities and more than quadruple its delivery robot fleet by 2027. The company plans to grow from around 2,700 robots to 12,000 and replicate its campus-based success at scale in urban markets.
• In July 2025, Cartken officially announced a strategic pivot away from sidewalk last-mile delivery toward industrial and material-handling robotics. The firm cited stronger traction in warehouse and factory settings, where robots deliver stable value over the unpredictable demand and regulatory constraints of street delivery efficiency.
• In June 2025, Wing and Walmart announced a major expansion of their drone-delivery collaboration, committing to bringing drone fulfillment to 100 additional Walmart stores across U.S. metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa. The move marks what they call the world's largest retail drone expansion.
• In January 2025, Serve Robotics raised USD 80 million to expand its fleet ahead of a planned build-out in Los Angeles and Dallas-Fort Worth. The funding supports an increase from roughly 100 robots to a target of 2,000 by the end of 2025, while broadening Los Angeles coverage and preparing for DFW expansion. Deals with Wing and Shake Shack complement its Uber Eats partnership.

REPORT COVERAGE 

The U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market analysis provides an in-depth study of the market size & forecast by all the market segments included in the report. It includes details on market dynamics and trends expected to drive the market during the forecast period. It offers information on the technological advancements, new product launches, key industry developments, and details on partnerships, mergers & acquisitions. The U.S. autonomous last mile delivery market forecast offers a comprehensive competitive landscape, encompassing market share, emerging opportunities, and profiles of key players in the automotive industry.

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Report Scope & Segmentation