DoorDash Launches Drone Delivery Unit After FAA Approval

DoorDash is taking another step toward autonomous deliveries with the launch of DoorDash Air, a new drone delivery business designed to become part of the company’s growing logistics network.

The announcement comes after DoorDash secured a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The certification gives the company legal authorization to operate a commercial drone delivery service in the United States, marking an important milestone in its long-term automation strategy.

However, customers should not expect drone-delivered meals immediately. DoorDash has not shared a timeline for when its custom-built aircraft will begin making deliveries. The company is expected to first conduct limited pilot programs, where drones operate over short distances while remaining within the operator’s visual line of sight.

To expand into fully autonomous, long-distance drone deliveries, DoorDash will still need FAA approval for its Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) technology. Companies including Amazon, Wing, and Zipline have already received similar certifications in recent years, allowing them to operate drones beyond an operator’s direct line of sight.

Despite developing its own drone technology, DoorDash says it will continue working with existing partners Wing and Flytrex. The company first teamed up with Alphabet’s Wing in 2022 to launch a drone delivery program in Australia before expanding the partnership to several U.S. markets, including Dallas-Fort Worth, in 2024.

DoorDash Air was created by DoorDash Labs, the company’s research and development division focused on robotics and autonomous technologies. The same team previously introduced Dot, DoorDash’s autonomous sidewalk delivery robot, in September 2025.

Today, Dot is operating in several Arizona communities, including Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler, as well as Fremont, California, giving the company real-world experience with autonomous last-mile deliveries.

While autonomous robots and drones may appear to be a major shift from DoorDash’s traditional business of connecting restaurants, customers, and independent delivery drivers, Stanley Tang, DoorDash’s co-founder and chief product officer, believes the strategy follows the company’s core mission of solving delivery challenges.

In a blog post published on Wednesday announcing DoorDash Air, Tang said the company did not begin by asking what kind of autonomous technology it could build. Instead, he explained that DoorDash focused on identifying real customer problems and determining the most effective way to solve them.

According to Tang, drones and sidewalk robots are simply different components of a larger delivery ecosystem. While the physical hardware plays an important role, the software responsible for coordinating deliveries is equally essential.

DoorDash Labs has developed an operating system known as the Autonomous Delivery Platform, which manages delivery coordination across multiple transportation methods. The software already works alongside Dot and human delivery drivers, and it will soon support the company’s drone operations as well.

The platform is designed to make real-time decisions about how an order should be delivered, selecting between a human courier, a drone, or an autonomous sidewalk robot based on the situation. Tang said the company is building every layer of the autonomous delivery stack, from hardware and embedded systems to routing algorithms that optimize deliveries.

He also highlighted this technical challenge as a key reason engineers may want to join DoorDash.

“Most autonomy companies work on one layer. At DoorDash, you’re working on all of them simultaneously; nobody else is running all these systems on one network,” Tang wrote. “DoorDash is where the most interesting problems in autonomy are being solved today.”

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