Starship Technologies, the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services, has today announced that the company agreed on a €50m quasi-equity facility agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB). The lending arm of the European Union (EU) and one of the largest providers of climate finance, the EIB supports projects that promote the priorities and objectives of the EU. This financing, which is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments, has been facilitated via a venture loan, and will be used for research and development, including the building of thousands more robots at Starship’s engineering and innovation facility in Tallinn.
Electric vehicles in all shapes and sizes will be part of our future and can be a key part in the sustainable transport puzzle. Starship already offers its services in many parts of the E.U., U.K. and the U.S. in cities, university campuses and industrial campuses, with further expansion planned soon. Starship can do L4 deliveries everywhere it operates – entire cities and campuses. The robots have been operating at L4 since 2018. Daily Starship robots will complete numerous deliveries in a row 100% autonomously, including road crossings. Therefore, the cost of a Starship delivery is now lower than the human equivalent, which is believed to be a world first for any robot delivery company, whereas most others are still majority human controlled and in pilot mode. Starship Technologies operates commercially daily around the world. Its zero-emission robots make more than 100,000 road crossings every day and have completed more than 2.5 million commercial deliveries and travelled 5 million kms (3 million+ miles) globally, more than any other autonomous delivery provider.