Robot delivery company Starship has received an investment of 50 million euros from the European Investment Bank (EIB). With this, the company wants to deliver orders with thousands of new robots.

The company from Estonia hopes to expand strongly in the coming years with the investment. The EIB, in turn, wants to focus more on technology that can reduce emissions and strengthen the EU economy.

According to CEO Alastair Westgarth, Starship also wants to develop new technology to make deliveries even faster and more economical. Westgarth says deliveries with Starship are already cheaper than deliveries with a human Courier. According to him, this is a first in the world of autonomous deliveries.

According to the EIB, the investment is in line with the objectives of the European Union. The bank is a supporter of technology that can reduce the amount of traffic in cities. Delivery robots can contribute to this because they could replace scooters, mopeds and cars, for example. In addition, the EIB wants to focus more on the overall development of the European technology sector in order to compete with American and Asian tech companies.

Starship was founded in 2014 by Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, two of the founders of the video calling service Skype. After the first Test services were offered in 2016, the company started the first commercial deliveries in 2017.

Starship’s robots have already made millions of deliveries in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and Estonia. Starship claims that 99 percent of deliveries happen completely autonomously, without interference from a human operator.