Convenience channel’s historic advantages are being eroded: the retail technology week in numbers — Retail Technology Innovation Hub
Publish Date: 2026-05-01 00:25:00
Source Domain: retailtechinnovationhub.com
10 million…Starship Technologies reports that it has notched up 10 million autonomous deliveries.
Its fleet of more than 3,000 autonomous robots, operating across around 300+ locations in eight countries, has generated over 22 million kilometres of real-world operational data and approximately 200 million individual road crossings.
They now complete over 125,000 road crossings every day (roughly two per second) operating fully autonomously at Level 4 without active human supervision, in dense urban environments and across all weather conditions.
“10 million deliveries means we’ve moved beyond proving the technology – we’re now scaling it,” says Ahti Heinla, Co-founder and CEO at Starship Technologies. “It is becoming part of the infrastructure of modern logistics – deployed commercially across eight countries, integrated with the world’s leading delivery platforms, and delivering measurable value to customers at scale.”
Starship’s operations span multiple European markets (including the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic) as well as the United States.
$323,886…While AI spending now averages $291,626 globally and is expected to rise by 11% to $323,886 by the end of 2026, three-quarters of e-commerce leaders admit their organisations are not ready for what comes next.
That’s according to a new Pattern report, based on a survey of 1,000 senior business leaders across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates.
This flags several organisational barriers that are preventing brands from moving beyond experimentation into full scale AI deployment.
The most commonly cited obstacles include ethical or regulatory concerns (29%), legacy systems and outdated infrastructure (28%), and resistance to change within teams (27%).
Collectively, these constraints create significant friction in organisations’ ability to integrate AI technologies into complex ecommerce workflows -…
