Matternet Partner Beeline UAS Expands Network to Fuel Drone Delivery

The expansion comes at a time of massive momentum for the broader drone industry. Over the past year or so, we’ve seenheavyweights like Alphabet’s Wing double down on sprawling Texas hubs, and we’ve seen international darlings like Manna Air Delivery onshore manufacturing right into the heartland to tap into infrastructure-rich local ecosystems.

For years, the standard drone delivery model was heavily vertical, meaning that one drone company did pretty much the entire process of drone delivery. They built the aircraft, they secured the regulatory certificates and they managed the day-to-day flight operations.

But Matternet’s new partnership with Beeline UAS represents a multi-operator framework. With this, Beeline UAS functions as the operational infrastructure provider. They don’t build hardware (Matternet does), and instead, they operate under their own FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate.

By adding Beeline to its operator network that already includes bigger names like UPS Flight Forward and Ameriflight, Matternet can rapidly deploy its technology into new territories without having to use its own people to operate every local fleet directly.

“Long-term leadership in drone delivery will be determined by the ability to safely deploy, manage and scale fleets of autonomous aircraft through an integrated technology platform and a strong operating network,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, Founder and CEO of Matternet in a prepared statement. “Beeline will play an important role in that strategy, increasing our capacity to expand efficiently into new markets.”

Focusing first on California

So, where is this expanded network flying first? Matternet and Beeline are pointing their aircraft directly near their headquarters in Silicon Valley, but more importantly in a region with some of the worst traffic gridlock in the country.

Alas, the initial phase of the partnership will focus on scaling Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations across the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles metropolitan area. I personally live in San Francisco (and ironically moved out of the Los Angeles metro area because the traffic just got to me) so I’m excited to see whether drone delivery can change that. More specific to San Francisco, I’d like to see fewer of those food delivery scooters out on the sidewalks.

With this, Beeline UAS will use Matternet’s ecosystem—which utilizes the robust Matternet M2 drone, automated Matternet Stations, and their centralized cloud software — to fulfill delivery-as-a-service contracts for food, retail, and healthcare clients. Prior to the Beeline partnership, Matternet had already been doing some small-scale, controlled deliveries in Mountain View, which is a suburban city within Silicon Valley.

To date, Matternet’s platform has already logged more than 60,000 commercial flights across dense urban and suburban spaces in both the U.S. and Europe.

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