SAN FRANCISCO – Autonomous delivery van company Udelv has announced the appointment of Russell Burke as its Chief Financial Officer. Burke joins Udelv with more than 20 years of finance and strategy experience, having held C-level executive roles at companies including Sony Music, Napster, Weight Watchers and most notably Magic Leap, where he was responsible for helping the startup through its initial growth phase to raise over $500 million in capital.
“We are honored to have Russell join our company,” commented Udelv CEO Daniel Laury. “His experience in driving the financial strategy, scaling for hypergrowth and raising large rounds of funding for innovative companies comes at a time when Udelv is entering a new phase of development with its second generation vehicle and a series of new contracts to fulfill.”
Burke said he witnessed first-hand at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the excitement around autonomous vehicles and the impact of Udelv’s real world experience with automonous deliveries.
“I am very happy to be joining the clear leader in the field, and looking forward to helping to scale the company as it creates positive disruption and significant value in e-commerce fulfillment,” said Burke.
Udelv’s first generation autonomous delivery van has successfully completed over 1,200 deliveries on public streets in the San Francisco Bay Area for multiple clients. Udelv has generated considerable interest from a variety of companies, including Walmart in Arizona and Texas’ auto-parts supplier XL Parts (who delivers up to 15,000 parts per day in the Houston area). Udelv has partnered with Walmart to pilot an autonomous grocery delivery service, and teamed up with Baidu to pilot the Chinese search giant’s latest autonomous driving open platform, Apollo 3.5.
Other projects are being conducted for San Francisco online grocer Farmstead; not-for-profit meal delivery organization Second Harvest Food Bank and Bay Area-based Draeger’s Market.
About Udelv
Udelv is revolutionizing transportation with its Autonomous Delivery Van (ADV), built specifically for last and middle-mile delivery on public roads. Founded in California in late 2016 by Daniel Laury and Akshat Patel, Udelv is on a mission to reinvent delivery and shape the future of autonomous driving.
