Israel-based drone food delivery company Flytrex is partnering with Nash to build an autonomous-first delivery system across its Dallas-Fort Worth sites. Nash, a San Francisco-based autonomous logistics platform, will decide which orders fly and which go by road.
By combining Flytrex’s drone fleet with Nash’s orchestration system, the companies said they can route customer orders to the fastest, most reliable way to fill them. Drones take the lead for most orders, and Nash’s on-demand couriers carry the rest.
“At Flytrex, we’re an autonomous-first company,” co-founder and CEO Amit Regev said. “Our customers want their order, fast and reliably, every time. Partnering with Nash lets us deliver that experience without losing focus on what we do best, which is building and operating the most advanced autonomous delivery system in the world. This is what mature drone delivery looks like at scale.”
Multimodal future of delivery
The integrated platform is designed to foster growth in autonomous deliveries. Drones deliver real improvements in speed, cost and reliability for most last-mile orders, but no single mode fits every order. Weather, time of day and order characteristics impact the best method of fulfillment.
Until now, most drone operators have bridged those gaps with their own ground couriers, which can prove difficult to sustain as volume grows. Flytrex and Nash are taking a different approach. Flytrex stays autonomous-first. Nash provides the intelligence to determine how each order should move and the couriers to deliver whatever does not fly.
The collaboration joins Flytrex’s autonomous fleet with Nash’s decision layer. That software reads each incoming order against real-time conditions and routes it to the optimal mode. Drone-eligible orders go to Flytrex’s fleet. Nash instantly dispatches orders better suited to ground delivery to its network of on-demand couriers. Customers see none of the routing logic, the companies said. They see an order that arrives as promised.
Multimodal is the future of delivery, Nash CEO and co-founder Mahmoud Ghulman said. The challenge is deciding, in the moment, the best mode for each order.
“That decision is what Nash does,” Ghulman said. “Working with Flytrex, we can give merchants autonomous delivery as a first-class option and route intelligently across every other mode when it makes sense. Any merchant on Nash can turn this on, and we expect many will.”
Texas operations and beyond
All of Flytrex’s Dallas-Fort Worth sites will benefit from the collaboration with Nash, the companies said. Customers get their orders efficiently whether they order on a sunny day or in stormy weather.
Flytrex and Nash said they plan to implement the system at every new Flytrex site as the company scales nationally. The integration will benefit both parties as it continues to roll out. Merchants already on Nash can add autonomous delivery as an option, and Flytrex will boost order volume as more merchants come on board. The two teams said they will continue to refine the integration to improve speed, cost and customer experience across every mode.
The Nash collaboration is part of a busy season for Flytrex. In April, the company launched a new Sky2 drone that can carry up to 8.8 pounds. In the last 18 months, the company secured an investment from Uber as part of a strategic partnership to fulfill Uber Eats orders. It also partnered with DoorDash to launch drone delivery in Frisco and Little Elm. And, it received FAA approval for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.
About the partners
Founded in 2013 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Flytrex is a drone delivery pioneer in BVLOS. The company began flying in North Texas in 2022 and has an office in Dallas and a manufacturing facility in Pilot Point.
Nash, founded in 2021, also has a presence in Texas. Earlier this month, the company announced a partnership in Austin with Autolane and Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery to offer food deliveries by autonomous vehicles.
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