Alastair Westgarth, former CEO of Alphabet’s Loon, joins the autonomous robot delivery company as it focuses on scaling its business globally
SAN FRANCISCO | June 1, 2021
Starship Technologies, the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services, today announced that Alastair Westgarth has been appointed Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.
“I’ve been following Starship Technologies’ progress for a considerable time now,” said Westgarth. “Autonomous delivery is changing logistics as we know it, impacting billions of people around the world. The team at Starship has been developing and perfecting the technology and its operations for years, since creating the robot delivery category in 2014. The pandemic fast-tracked wider awareness of contactless delivery and now many more customers and businesses understand its convenience, ease and environmental benefits. I’m excited about this opportunity and looking forward to helping the company scale both on campuses and in neighborhoods, giving millions more people access to this market-leading, convenient, safe and environmentally friendly delivery service.”
Westgarth has more than 30 years’ experience and was most recently CEO at Alphabet’s Loon, which started as part of X, Google’s Moonshot Factory, and focused on bringing internet access to unserved and underserved communities around the world via a network of balloons operating on the edge of space. He has deep tech expertise and has built and run several companies. Prior to joining Loon in 2017, he served as CEO at Quintel Solutions, was a vice president at Nortel and director of engineering at Bell Mobility. Westgarth holds a degree in electrical engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Starship, which is now available to more than one million people on a daily basis, announced in May that it had quadrupled deliveries globally since the start of the pandemic and that it had completed 1.5 million commercial deliveries around the world.
“Alastair shares our belief that we are building something that will make the world of delivery better for everyone,” said Janus Friis, co-founder of Starship. “Last-mile delivery is notoriously costly, inefficient and harms the environment from excessive congestion and pollution. We think Alastair has the right experience and mindset to help Starship continue to grow its position as a leader in reshaping last-mile delivery, which will impact the movement of things on a much larger scale.”
Starship’s co-founder Ahti Heinla, who is now taking on the role of CTO, added: “When we created Starship in 2014, we wanted to make peoples’ lives easier and upend the way people received goods. We’ve seen that vision come to life over the past few years and our technology is now ready to truly scale. Alastair’s global leadership and tech skills will be vital in helping us take Starship to the next stage in our growth journey.”
The Starship Food Delivery app is available for download on iOS and Android. To get started, users choose from a range of their favorite food or drink items, then drop a pin where they want their delivery to be sent. They can then watch as the robot makes its journey to them, via an interactive map. Once the robot arrives, they receive an alert, and can then meet and unlock it through the app.
Starship Technologies operates commercially on a daily basis around the world. Its zero-emission robots have made more than 1.5 million autonomous deliveries, travelled millions of miles and make more than 80,000 road crossings every day.
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ABOUT STARSHIP TECHNOLOGIES:
Starship Technologies is revolutionizing deliveries with autonomous robots. The robots are designed to deliver food, groceries and packages locally in minutes. The delivery robots have traveled millions of miles and completed over 1.5m autonomous deliveries around the world. They drive autonomously but are monitored by humans who can take control at any time. Starship was founded by Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis (Skype Chief Architect and Co-founder) and Alastair Westgarth is the CEO.
Website: https://www.starship.xyz/follow / starshipdeliveries.com
Facebook: @Starshiptech
Twitter: @Starshiprobots
Instagram: @Starshiprobots
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Henry Harris-Burland
VP of Marketing
Starship Technologies
henry.harris-burland@starship.co
Janel Steinberg (US) / James Meredith (UK)
Liberty Communications for Starship Technologies
+1 415 429 5652 / +44 207 751 4444
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