‘I invented Skype, now my delivery robots will bring shopping to your door’

Speaking to Ahti Heinla over Zoom is somewhat ironic. After all, this is the man who co-founded Skype back in 2003.

In February Microsoft, now the owner of the world’s first mass-used video calling software, announced it was closing down Skype in May as it seeks to transfer users to its own Teams communications service.

Speaking for the first time about the end of his invention from his home in the Estonian capital Tallinn, Heinla expresses not so much regret about its demise, but rather that Skype would have been as dominant as Zoom had he and his co-founders held on to it.

“We founded Skype more than 20 years ago, and we ended up selling it just a couple of years later,” he says, referring to its sale to eBay for $2.6bn (£2bn) in 2005.

“So, for the vast majority of its history, Skype has not been an independent company but has belonged to some other larger tech corporation. Clearly, it has not done well under the new ownership.”

While Heinla and his colleagues – Niklas Zennström from Sweden and Janus Friis from Denmark – became wealthier than they may have dreamt following the sale to eBay, they could have been even better off had they held on to Skype for a few more years. In 2011, Microsoft took the video calling group off eBay’s hands in a deal worth $8.5bn (£6.5bn).

“Skype really did a lot of revolutionary stuff and opened up a bunch of stuff to the world, which we now think is commonplace,” he added.

Heinla, however, is not one for regrets. He’s a billionaire as a result of Skype and his work since selling the business, so he says regrets are somewhat pointless to him.

Even with all that money in the bank, he does not like to flash the cash. Asked what the most extravagant item he points to a giant fish tank.

“I don’t know about the cost of it, but the one thing that I’m slightly embarrassed is the fish tank in the middle of the living room in the home me and my wife bought a couple of years ago. So that is a little bit like too luxurious for me.

“I wouldn’t have built it if I’d built the house myself, but it came with the house.”

It wasn’t always such a comfortable existence, but the source of his love of computing is obvious. Growing up in a Soviet controlled Estonia, Heinla’s parents were computer programmers.

“Software development was largely a female dominated profession back in those Soviet days. It had sort of always been like that. After all, the very first software developer was a woman,” he adds.

He is giving Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, or Ada Lovelace, the accolades her boss has hogged for more than 200 years.

Lovelace was an English mathematician who worked on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, widely considered as the world’s first computer.

“My mother was working on practical stuff, like Ada did. My father was a little bit of a more theoretical computer scientist who used the computer programming language named after Ada.”

After selling Skype, Heinla did not sit back and count his money. He moved on to the next thing, transforming the way households around the globe get their deliveries.

After five years working with eBay on the development of Skype, he and his business partner Friis set up Starship Technologies.

While the name conjures up images of blasting into space, the mission is a great deal more down to earth. From connecting people online, the pair have turned their attention to making grocery delivery cheaper for consumers.

“It was actually a computer-generated name,” explains Heinla. “I wrote a computer program to generate the various names that would resonate with the themes and this was one of the names that came out from the computer program.

“We want to reach for the stars and ship things to people, so the name stuck.”

Today, Starship has the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world and has a deal with supermarket Co-op to operate in cities including Cambridge, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Northampton in the UK.

The group’s puppy-like fleet – although they call them “grocery badgers” – runs to more than 2,000 robots that have driven more than nine million miles and completed over seven million deliveries around the world.

Heinla has plans to produce tens of thousands of new robots from new production plants across the globe. The robots are powered by a day-long battery and use Starships’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and maps to learn routes even if satellite GPS systems do not have coverage in any area.

While he is eyeing an investment worth tens of millions into a production plant in the UK, Heinla would like to see the Government change its policy on delivery robots before making such a commitment.

“There is a very specific thing that the UK government could do and that is to unify the regulations around driving robots on the pavement,” he says.

“Right now we go council by council and they have to give them their blessing. But it would be great if there was a national regulation that set out principles how to do that, or just that the Government said out loud that the councils can decide which sort of devices are allowed on the on the pavement.”

Heinla may refuse to have any regrets about selling Skype so early on in its development, but he has taken one lesson of those days on board.

As Starship continues on its path to dominate the world of robot deliveries. He has no intention of selling what he believes is already a $1bn (£770m) business.

“Maybe there is, indeed, a lesson to be learnt on that,” he says.

The Starship robot delivery experience

Arriving in the new town of Upper Cambourne just outside Cambridge, it is hard not to notice a somewhat suspicious gathering on one of the town greens.

There are little white six white robots, hanging around as if the local AI youth club has just been subject to budget cuts.

These puppy-like machines are, however, not causing mischief. They are awaiting their next delivery instructions.

They are among the first delivery robots to arrive in the UK after Estonian group Starship Technologies struck a deal with the Co-op to trial its new technology on UK streets here, and in cities including Leeds, Milton Keynes and Southampton.

A few hundred yards away is the local Co-op and, inside, store assistant Ryan is collecting groceries for the last of around 50 robot deliveries each day.

Andrei Bud, who works in operations at Starship UK head office in Milton Keynes, demonstrates one of the robots while we wait the few minutes for one of those chilling out in the park to arrive to collect what Ryan has collected.

“People do get attached to them,” says Andrei. “Many people want to give them names.”

Indeed, the locals do seem to have grown rather fond of them.

The delivery orders come into the Co-op staff as they would for a human order from the likes of Deliveroo or Uber Eats. The mobile-phone-like device pings with the order and the staff collect the order while a robot is dispatched to the store, if one is not already there.

Upon arrival, the AI-powered little Starship sets the bell off in the store to alert the staff to its ready to collect. No one in the store knows where it’s going or who has ordered. Only the robot knows that for data protection purposes.

Open up the lid, put the shopping inside, scan to confirm it’s all there and off it pops, like an excited spaniel.

Andrei said: “If it’s a special delivery, the person that has ordered it can send the robot the command to play a song. Like, if it’s someone’s birthday it will sing Happy Birthday to you when you open it up.”

He insists no one has even attempted to steal one of the robots yet, and at 25kg it’s not surprising. Plus, a loud alarm goes off if the machines are tampered with.

As for the UK weather – it’s cold and drizzly today – the robots, which use AI to constantly update routes and have sensor and cameras to navigate crossing roads safely, handle it with ease. “We operate in the snow in Finland,” adds Andrei. “So, the British weather is easy for them.”