Case Study
Zipline saved up to 70% with Hedgehog vs. the public cloud
The Challenge
Zipline operates the world’s largest autonomous drone delivery network, which delivers medical supplies, retail and food orders.
Zipline’s doorstep delivery business was scaling 20% week-over-week, straining its AI infrastructure for drone inferencing and model training. Public cloud costs didn’t scale economically with Zipline’s growing GPU training needs and as a healthcare logistics company delivering medical products, Zipline needed direct control over data governance and privacy. Building a private cloud meant configuring hyperscale-grade networking — spine-leaf topologies, VLANs, ASIC-level routing, and hundreds of gigabits of throughput with high availability — but Zipline’s team were software and DevOps engineers, not certified network engineers, with no experience operating switch CLIs or tuning firmware. Little public documentation existed for running infrastructure at this scale outside true hyperscalers, and headcount couldn’t grow in proportion to the servers and switches needed.
The Solution
Zipline built a private AI cloud on Hedgehog + Celestica/SONiC, using a Kubernetes-native GitOps API to automate switch configuration, letting a small team network like a hyperscaler.
Zipline deployed Hedgehog, open-source software that automates AI cloud network configuration, running on Celestica switches with SONiC. Hedgehog exposes a Kubernetes-native API, letting engineers declare wiring, VLANs, and routing via GitOps instead of manual switch CLI configuration or ASIC-level tuning. This lets Zipline “network like a hyperscaler,” using familiar AWS-style tools and processes without hiring a dedicated networking team, and scale servers and switches automatically to keep pace with 20% weekly business growth. The stack reliably supports both real-time onboard drone inference, which runs with zero cloud connectivity during flight, and intensive GPU model training back in the data center.
At-a-Glance
COMPANY
Zipline
HEADQUARTERS
South San Francisco CA
INDUSTRY
Air Transportation
HARDWARE
Celestica switches, GPU server farms for model training and R&D and onboard drone compute units (3 per drone) for real-time inference
PRODUCTS USED
Hedgehog AI fabric software automating SONiC switch control plane, running on Celestica switches with SONiC OS and Kubernetes-native GitOps API for declarative network configuration
WEBSITE
Zipline Video Case Study
Zipline Principal Engineer Florian Berchtold and Co-Founder Ryan Oksenhorn discuss how Hedgehog enables Zipline to run a private AI cloud to deliver products store to door in minutes. Zipline trains their AI workloads on private cloud infrastructure that gives them maximum control and minimum cost at hyperscale.
Results
Achieved up to 70% Cost Reduction
Zipline's cost savings was realized from owning and operating their own infrastructure compared to a three-year public cloud lease.
Full Data Governance and Control
Zipline maintains direct ownership over sensitive data and workloads, without ceding control to a third-party cloud vendor.
Hyperscaler simplicity with a small team
Zipline's Software Engineers with no networking background can run and scale enterprise-grade infrastructure via a Kubernetes-native GitOps API.
“Operating in private cloud can be up to 70% cheaper than going with public cloud vendors. With Hedgehog as our network infrastructure partner we can hyperscale on-prem infrastructure at the same pace as our business."”
Florian Berchtold, Principal Engineer at Zipline
Additional Resources
AI Infra Summit Conference
In this session, leaders from Celestica, Hedgehog, and Zipline explore how hardware, software, and open-source innovation come together to unlock the future of scalable AI infrastructure.
Hedgehog and Zipline at Networking Field Day
Florian Berchtold, Zipline's Principal Engineer responsible for AI developer productivity, highlighted Hedgehog's crucial role in their operations and discusses why they chose an on-premises strategy.
Zipline now delivers Chipotle!
Uber Eats and Zipline Partnership
Zipline, a leader in drone delivery, and Uber Technologies announced a strategic partnership, which aims to scale drone delivery across the United States.