Alphabet's Wing to start drone delivery in San Francisco Bay Area

March 23 (Reuters) - Alphabet-owned GOOGL.O Wing plans to begin delivering packages by drone to homes in California's San Francisco Bay Area in the coming months, it said on Monday, extending its rollout to one of its earliest testing grounds.

Wing is seeking to scale what it says is a solution to the hurdles facing last-mile delivery of small household items and meals by using lightweight, automated drones designed to fly directly to homes in dense residential areas.

The expansion marks a return to the roots for the company, which was founded in the Bay Area in 2012 as part of Alphabet's X.

X is Alphabet’s "Moonshot Factory," a research unit that takes on experimental projects such as self-driving firm Waymo, and helps spin them into independent companies.

Wing provides drone delivery for Walmart WMT.O groceries and household essentials in under 30 minutes in some U.S. states. With DoorDash DASH.O, it offers rapid food delivery from restaurant chains such as Wendy’s and Panera.

The company has completed more than 750,000 deliveries to date, and serves more than two million customers across parts of the U.S., it said.

The Bay Area rollout comes as Wing pushes to build a logistics network focused on small and local deliveries, while working to broaden adoption beyond early pilot markets.

The company also started a pilot program with Serve Robotics SERV.O in October 2024, in which Serve's on-ground robots picked up food from restaurants and transferred it to Wing drones for aerial delivery.