Walmart Completes Over 1 Million Drone Deliveries

Walmart has completed more than one million drone deliveries to hundreds of thousands of customers, the company recently announced. The company began the pilot a few years ago.

Walmart said the one millionth delivery comes as it continues to rapidly expand drone capabilities across 66 stores in four states serving five metro markets. “Since launch we’ve seen customers evolve from trying it to experience the novelty of the service for items like bananas or snack food, to now turning to it frequently to get items delivered really fast, when they need them most,” Walmart said. The company works with drone delivery providers including Wing and Zipline.

The company said that over 200,000 of the one million deliveries were completed in the state of Texas. Walmart said the average drone delivery time is 23 minutes, but it completed its fastest delivery in four minutes and 44 seconds.

Last August, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a rule that would allow companies to fly drones outside of an operator’s line of sight and therefore over longer distances, making it easier for them to offer more drone deliveries.

Drones generally deliver one small order at a time. Wing says its drones can carry packages weighing up to 2.5 pounds and travel up to 12 miles round trip. One pilot can reportedly oversee up to 32 drones.

In 2025, it cost around $13.50 per delivery to carry a package by drone versus $2 for a traditional vehicle, Shakiba Enayati, an assistant professor of supply chain and analytics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, said.

For years, China has been a leader in the “low-altitude” economy—manned and unmanned economic activities occurring in the airspace up to 1,000 meters above ground. Government policy has encouraged growth in this space. Read more about global technology in the April 2026 issue of NACS Magazine feature “Global Takes on the Tech Landscape.”