Arrive, the smart mailbox company formerly known as Dronedek, has now raised more than $9 million in support of its smart mailboxes designed for autonomous delivery.

The company last week closed on a crowdfunding raise of more than $1.3 million from 428 investors, most of them new to the Indianapolis-based innovator. The company now has nearly 5,000 individual investors and employs 15 people worldwide.

“This demonstration of support for our product is really important as we get closer to distribution,” said Arrive CEO Dan O’Toole. “We’ve been working steadily for the past nine years, hitting all our targets and constantly iterating as the industry advances. We’re more than ready to be out there in the field.”

Arrive is poised to solve the biggest issues in package delivery. For consumers, that’s the security of the more than 36 million packages now commonly left unprotected on porches and driveways each day. An estimated 1.7 million packages a day are stolen before they could be picked up by their owners. 

For businesses, Arrive helps shave costs of the most expensive and difficult part of the supply chain – the last mile – by adding a secure mailbox that can keep packages safe from theft and can accept delivery via human or autonomous means, all while providing documented chain-of-custody. By 2028, the autonomous last-mile delivery market is expected to surpass $51 billion.

For the world, autonomous delivery can help reduce carbon emissions created by traditional delivery means and will help reduce traffic congestion and safety issues. Experts estimate that 20-30 percent of a city’s CO2 emissions result from last-mile deliveries.

O’Toole is among the first in the United States to secure patents for a smart mailbox designed to securely accept packages delivered by drone and holds a first-position patent portfolio for the next-generation mailbox of autonomous and drone delivery.