Key takeaways:
DoorDash is now a certified air carrier authorized by the FAA to commercially operate our own drone delivery service designed specifically for local commerce.
Developed in-house at DoorDash Labs, drones will operate within our existing marketplace infrastructure to further enable seamless, scalable commercial delivery.
Drone delivery offers a way for us to serve more customers and solve the hardest problems on the ground for local businesses.
Today, DoorDash announced that it has earned Part 135 air carrier certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is launching DoorDash Air, our in-house drone program. This certification means that DoorDash is authorized to operate as an air carrier and offer an even more deeply integrated drone delivery experience, opening up new possibilities for local businesses.
FAA Part 135 certification is a significant regulatory and technical milestone. The process is rigorous and the standards are high: operators must pass a robust five-stage evaluation process verifying aircraft airworthiness, maintenance programs, and safety procedures. The bar for safety and operational reliability is where it should be for operating over communities, and we're proud to become just the eighth drone operator to have earned this certificate. We're grateful to the FAA for their engagement throughout this process.
“We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere. We're building the full stack to make that possible from the ground infrastructure to the drone itself, and the handoff systems that make it work together seamlessly,” said Harrison Shih, Head of DoorDash Air. “Advances in hardware, compute, and AI are creating extraordinary new capabilities for local commerce, and becoming a certified air carrier accelerates everything we're building.”
Adding a new dimension to local delivery
We know what makes delivery work at scale, both on the ground and in the air, from more than 10 billion lifetime orders and tens of thousands of drone deliveries completed to date.
Local businesses on DoorDash are growing the volume and variety of what they deliver, and we're putting more technology into the hands of every merchant as part of our mission. Drone delivery means consumers can have what they need when they need it most, whether that’s essentials like cold medicine or time-sensitive items like a coffee or hot meal to a nurse finishing a 12-hour shift. In 2025, drones delivered in an average of just 25 minutes based on our latest estimates. In fact, some participating locations in our drone partner pilots saw DoorDash order volume grow by roughly 30%, with the lift sustained across the nine weeks following the pilot launch.
Drone delivery also solves unique challenges for local commerce. For example, more than 20% of orders on the DoorDash platform in 2025 traveled three to five miles, but those orders took on average nearly 25% longer than shorter deliveries, largely because finding the right Dasher takes longer for mid-range trips. Routing mid-range deliveries to drones lets Dashers focus on the orders they often favor: shorter deliveries that can be done quickly, staying near a high concentration of merchants for optimal routing, and maximizing their earning potential by getting them to their next order faster.
What we’re building
Similarly to our ground robot, Dot, we're designing and building our drone program inside DoorDash Labs, our in-house robotics and autonomy team. We're designing an aircraft purpose-built for the gaps we see in local commerce, and it complements the short- and long-range designs our partners are scaling. Our drone is also proudly American-designed and built, with the majority of components made right here in the U.S.
The aircraft is what everyone sees. The harder problem is the infrastructure and integration on the ground: real-time inventory reconciliation, universal handoff systems for drive-throughs, rooftops, or merchant back doors. That infrastructure layer is what makes drone delivery actually work at scale for merchants. We're building the complete end-to-end system, not just the aircraft. Solving hard physical-world problems for local businesses is our focus.
DoorDash Air runs on top of DoorDash's network, one of the largest local commerce networks in the world. That scale is what makes it useful for merchants: a local business already reaches customers ordering dinner, groceries, or phone chargers through that network, without building any of the infrastructure behind it. As the network keeps growing, we expect drone delivery to scale right along with it, giving more merchants a faster way to reach the customers already ordering from them.
One network, every mode of delivery
Drones are one part of a growing set of delivery options we're scaling for merchants, alongside Dashers, Dot, and our autonomous delivery partners. Dashers remain essential to the network, handling the vast majority of our millions of daily deliveries, including orders autonomy can't handle like navigating up apartment buildings and fulfilling large orders.
We’ve already built the layer to handle the coordination challenge: our Autonomous Delivery Platform matches every order with the most effective method in real time, so a neighborhood pizzeria plugs into the same network as a national chain. As the demand for local delivery increases, we're working with leading autonomous technology providers while building the infrastructure — including AI tools like the SmartScale for merchants — so any partner can integrate with us as we extend into the air.
What's next
Earning Part 135 certification and launching our first-party drone program is an important step years in the making, but it's only the beginning. For us it’s not just about building the drone, it’s just as much about running the airline: the routing, the safety systems, the operational layer that makes everything fly smoothly.
We'll have more to share later this year on the aircraft and how our drone program fits into the broader network alongside Dashers, Dot, and our partners.
DoorDash Labs is hiring across robotics, autonomy, hardware, and operations. Come build with us.
Forward-Looking Statements
This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events, and such statements in this communication include, but are not limited to, DoorDash’s strategy with respect to multi-modal delivery and expectations regarding the availability, performance, outcomes, and benefits of drone delivery. Expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize, and actual results in future periods are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For information on potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from any results predicted, please see DoorDash’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
