Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery offshoot, is scaling up fast with Walmart. The two announced drone delivery will hit over 100 Walmart stores across five new cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa. Walmart is also expanding Wing service in its first market, Dallas-Fort Worth.
This is a massive jump for Wing, which started with a pilot in Dallas in 2023 serving 60,000 homes. Now it’s operating in 18 Walmart Supercenters there. The latest rollout nearly quintuples that footprint.
Greg Cathey, Walmart’s SVP of U.S. Transformation and Innovation, pushed the convenience angle. 
“We’re pushing the boundaries of convenience to better serve our customers, making shopping faster and easier than ever before,” Cathey said.
Wing CEO Adam Woodworth told TechCrunch the company is done experimenting and now focused on scaling.
“We’re decidedly out of the pilot and trial phase and into scaling up this business,” Woodworth said.
“We’ve always been the type of company that wants to do something well and stay focused. And so this is the next big bite at the apple. It’s a much bigger bite than than we’ve taken before.”
Woodworth credits the Dallas pilot for refining Wing’s playbook. Now they’re “copy-pasting” that model to new cities.
Wing won’t say if it’s profitable yet. The strategy is to keep costs flat while flying more by using small, automated drones. Scaling delivery volume should spread out fixed costs without hiring tons of new staff.
“The more places you can be operating, the more you can be flying, the more you can you can defray those costs. This is a meaningful step in that direction,” Woodworth added.
Wing is also pushing into food delivery through DoorDash, partnering since 2022 to launch drone orders first in Australia, then Dallas-Fort Worth and Charlotte.
Walmart’s bet on Wing signals growing confidence in drone delivery beyond just test runs. The fleet is taking off at Walmart stores from coast to coast.
