Wing, the drone delivery subsidiary of Alphabet, announced Monday it will launch residential delivery service in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company did not name specific cities or provide a start date, saying only that service would begin “in the coming months.”
For Wing, the move is a homecoming. The company was founded here in 2012, inside Alphabet’s X lab — the same skunkworks that produced Waymo. Since then, Wing’s drones have flown almost everywhere except the Bay Area: North Carolina, Virginia, Australia. The company has partnered with Walmart and DoorDash, logged more than 750,000 deliveries, and now serves over two million customers across the United States.
Here’s how it works: a white-and-yellow multi-rotor drone flies autonomously within about six miles of a hub. A human operator monitors conditions remotely but doesn’t pilot the aircraft directly. The drone never lands — it lowers packages by tether into a backyard, clearing fences, parked cars, and pets. Customers order through a mobile app. Delivery takes about 30 minutes.
Wing is also scaling aggressively nationwide. In 2026, the service will add 150 new Walmart locations. By 2027, the company plans to reach 270 stores and potentially 40 million shoppers. Since October 2024, Wing has been testing a hybrid model with Serve Robotics: a sidewalk robot picks up a restaurant order and hands it off to a drone for the last mile.
The Bay Area won’t be easy terrain. San Francisco has already seen friction over drone delivery — a DoorDash effort to establish a test facility in the Mission District sparked zoning disputes and prompted the city to draft restrictive legislation. Wing holds the first FAA certification to operate drones over major U.S. cities. Now it plans to use it.