In a significant step toward transforming last-mile delivery, Walmart and Wing, the drone delivery arm of Alphabet, have announced the expansion of their partnership. The collaboration, which began as a pilot in Dallas-Fort Worth, is now spreading its wings to five additional U.S. cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.
This marks the most ambitious scaling effort for drone delivery from either company and underscores the increasing feasibility of autonomous aerial logistics in retail.
Initially launched in 2023, the partnership between Walmart and Wing began with a test program involving two Supercenters in Dallas-Fort Worth, reaching approximately 60,000 households. The successful outcomes measured by efficiency, customer satisfaction, and operational insights have emboldened both companies to move from experimentation to commercial expansion.
By mid-2025, over 100 Walmart stores will support drone delivery via Wing in the six metropolitan areas now included in the program.
“We’re decidedly out of the pilot and trial phase and into scaling up this business,” said Adam Woodworth, CEO of Wing.
A Strategic Leap for Walmart
For Walmart, this expansion is more than a tech experiment, it’s part of a broader innovation strategy. Greg Cathey, Walmart’s Senior Vice President of Transformation and Innovation, emphasized the company’s vision:
“We’re pushing the boundaries of convenience to better serve our customers, making shopping faster and easier than ever before.”
Drone delivery fits into Walmart’s evolving playbook, where convenience, automation, and speed are crucial to competing with rivals like Amazon. By investing in aerial logistics, Walmart aims to redefine retail in a landscape where speed and automation are the new benchmarks of service quality.
Why Wing? Alphabet’s Precision Logistics
Wing is one of the most advanced drone delivery companies in the world, born out of Alphabet’s X the company’s moonshot factory. With years of R&D behind it, Wing brings a mature, efficient, and lightweight drone fleet to the table. The drones are built to carry small, lightweight packages over short distances with high automation and minimal human intervention.
Woodworth elaborated that the success of the Dallas-Fort Worth expansion allowed Wing to develop a replicable model that could be “copy-pasted” to other markets.
“We figured out how the expansion worked in DFW, and now we’re applying that model to additional markets.”
Wing’s unique approach allows for the scaling of drone deliveries without ballooning operational costs. Their strategy relies on maximizing drone utilization while keeping the number of on-ground personnel low.
While Woodworth refrained from discussing profitability, he highlighted Wing’s core business philosophy: keeping fixed costs flat while increasing delivery volume.
Wing’s hypothesis centers around using automated, low-cost drones for repetitive delivery routes. Every expansion into a new market increases flight activity, helping to spread operational costs across a larger service footprint.
“The more places you can be operating, the more you can be flying, the more you can defray those costs,” Woodworth explained.
This approach is particularly suited for dense suburban areas, where multiple deliveries can be dispatched within a small radius, making drone delivery more cost-efficient.
For customers, the drone delivery service offers ultra-fast fulfillment of everyday items household supplies, over-the-counter medicines, snacks, and small electronics. Deliveries are often completed within 30 minutes, and the drones drop off items in designated landing zones such as backyards or driveways.
As more stores come online, service coverage will expand, particularly in neighborhoods near Supercenters. This model allows for hyperlocal delivery, reducing the need for traditional last-mile logistics and making fulfillment greener and faster.
Wing’s ambitions extend beyond retail. The company is also entering the restaurant food delivery space through a partnership with DoorDash. The two firms first collaborated in Australia in 2022, then expanded into the Dallas-Fort Worth and Charlotte markets in the U.S.
This dual focus retail and food positions Wing as a versatile drone logistics provider capable of servicing both on-demand groceries and hot meals.
The Walmart-Wing expansion reflects a broader shift in how companies think about logistics. As e-commerce matures, the pressure to shorten delivery windows intensifies. Drones offer a viable alternative to costly truck-based deliveries for small packages, particularly in suburban regions.
Furthermore, autonomous delivery is gaining regulatory and public acceptance. With the FAA gradually opening airspace for drone operations and customers becoming more comfortable with automation, commercial drone delivery is no longer a novelty, it’s becoming a competitive necessity.
By bringing drone delivery to six U.S. metro areas, Walmart and Wing are turning what was once a futuristic concept into a practical, everyday service. For Walmart, it’s a strategic move to stay ahead in the convenience race. For Wing, it’s a coming-of-age moment as the company transitions from moonshot to mainstream logistics player.
As more stores, households, and partners come online, the vision of aerial commerce is no longer up in the air, it’s flying forward at full speed.
