Warehouse inventory drones: what IKEA, DSV, GEODIS and other customers confirm

Indoor drones that fly warehouse aisles at night and photograph pallet labels are past the pilot stage at several large operators. The strongest evidence comes from customers speaking for themselves. Ingka Group, IKEA's largest franchisee, said in August 2024 that more than 250 Verity drones were running across 73 IKEA locations in nine countries. Logistics company DSV says on its own service page that it has 75 warehouse drones in use worldwide. The chief executive of logistics company GEODIS wrote in October 2024 that teams at "multiple GEODIS U.S. campuses" use Gather AI drones.

Below that tier, most of the numbers come from the drone makers. Corvus Robotics releases carry named customer quotes from Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, ASICS America and Dermalogica, and a Southern Glazer's vice president, quoted in a Corvus release, said the company had scaled the system "across nine sites." Verity says it is live at more than 200 sites. Gather AI says it doubled its operational footprint in a year. None of the three vendors or their customers has published a price, a contract value or a payback calculation that a reader could check.

For a distribution center or 3PL operations lead, the practical reading is this: inventory drones are real, repeat-purchased tools for counting reserve pallet locations, mostly when people are not in the aisles. The public record supports "fewer manual counting hours and more frequent counts." It does not support the vendors' accuracy and return-on-investment headlines as independent findings.

Analysis based on Ingka Group and DSV releases and service pages, a GEODIS chief executive's public post, Corvus Robotics, Gather AI and Verity releases and case pages, SEC Form D filings by Corvus Robotics and Gather AI, and reporting by Warehouse Totaal, The Almanac, DC Velocity, Supply Chain Dive, TechCrunch and The Verge, all retrieved November 14, 2026. AI assistance was used in research and drafting, and the piece was checked by a separate AI fact-check and AI editorial review. Servospace did not interview the companies or customers or visit any site. Calculations are Servospace arithmetic on published figures and are labeled as such. Last reviewed November 14, 2026.

In this analysis

• The short answer
• What kind of evidence each number is
• IKEA and Verity: the largest customer-confirmed fleet
• DSV: from a 2020 pilot to 75 drones
• GEODIS and NFI: Gather AI in 3PL buildings
• Corvus Robotics: named customers inside vendor releases
• Pilot, live, paid or customer confirmed
• What the denominators show
• Where the limits show up
• What to ask a vendor
• Limitations
• What would change this assessment

The short answer

Yes, inventory drones are in live use at named customers, and at least four of those customers (IKEA, DSV, GEODIS and Southern Glazer's) have run them at more than one site. What the public record does not show is how much they cost, how accurate they are against an independent count, or how many of each vendor's sites are full deployments rather than single trials.

The work being automated is narrow. The drones scan barcodes or license plate labels on pallets in reserve racking, check whether a location is empty or occupied, and in some systems count cases. The output goes into the warehouse management system as discrepancies for people to resolve. Every customer in this piece describes the drone as a counting and searching tool, not as a replacement for the inventory team.

What kind of evidence each number is

IKEA and Verity: the largest customer-confirmed fleet

Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee, published the most specific customer-owned count in the field. Its August 16, 2024 release says IKEA started working with Verity in 2021, that the first drone flew in IKEA Switzerland, and that "today, more than 250 drones operate across 73 locations, in nine countries." The same release said IKEA had tested drones flying alongside workers during operating hours at its Winterslag distribution center in Belgium and had started installation at its Perryville, Maryland distribution center that summer. The Verge reported that the drones previously flew only when the buildings were not operating.

A later local report adds one data point. The Almanac reported in April 2025 that the IKEA store in East Palo Alto, California was the 100th in the chain to get the drones, after a trial from February and full operation in March. The store manager told the paper the drones would not replace any of the store's 300 employees or cut their hours. That "100th" figure comes from a news report of a store event, not from an Ingka release, so Servospace treats it as reported rather than confirmed.

The most detailed operating account comes from IKEA Belgium. In an April 2025 interview with the Dutch trade title Warehouse Totaal, project manager Tommy Niemierowski said 11 drones had flown at the Winterslag distribution center since 2023 and had been operational since the end of that year. They cover the conventional part of the building, four halls with more than 36,000 pallet locations. The automated halls are counted by their own systems. The drones scan weekly instead of monthly or yearly, and he said misplaced pallets the team had not known about used to take about 500 staff hours a year to find and fix.

Verity's own figures are larger and looser. Its June 15, 2026 release says the platform "is currently live and scaling across more than 200 sites in 15 countries," and its customer results page says "200+ facilities deployed" in 16 countries. The release says customers "typically achieve 10-15x ROI." Verity does not define a site, does not separate trials from full rollouts, and does not show how the return figure is calculated.

Servospace arithmetic: 250 drones across 73 locations is about 3.4 drones per location as of August 2024. If IKEA had passed its 100th store (Almanac, reported not confirmed) by April 2025 and Verity had more than 200 sites by June 2026, IKEA would account for roughly half of Verity's site count. The dates and definitions differ, so this is an illustration of customer concentration, not a measured share.

DSV: from a 2020 pilot to 75 drones

DSV gives the cleanest pilot-to-production trail. Its November 17, 2020 release said DSV and Verity had tested the system at the Moerdijk warehouse in the Netherlands, "completing thousands of autonomous flights and tens of thousands of scans," mostly at night. It said "the successful pilot now leads to roll-out of the drone system into more DSV warehouses." A DSV executive added a qualifier worth keeping: the system could benefit many warehouses "where the business case makes sense."

DSV's current warehouse drone service page says "DSV has 75 warehouse drones in use around the world that have flown more than 500,000 hours and checked over five million locations." It offers drones "at selected DSV warehouses," names a site in Vestby, Norway, and says the drones "can scan between 100 and 300 locations per hour." The page is undated. That page does not name the drone vendor. DSV's 2020 Moerdijk release named Verity, and Verity still listed DSV as a customer in its June 2026 IERA release.

Those DSV figures do not reconcile with each other. Servospace arithmetic: five million locations over 500,000 hours is about 10 locations per hour, well below DSV's stated 100 to 300 per hour. Spread across 75 drones, 500,000 hours is about 6,700 hours each. DSV does not say whether "hours" means time in the air, time in service, or something else, so the gap is a question to ask, not evidence of an error.

GEODIS and NFI: Gather AI in 3PL buildings

GEODIS chief executive Marie-Christine Lombard wrote in a LinkedIn post in October 2024 (date derived from the post identifier) that "in multiple GEODIS U.S. campuses, the teams are using Gather AI software" with autonomous drones. At one facility, she wrote, the U.S. team saw "a 5X increase in productivity," going "from 800 counts in one day with four manual counters to 1,200 scan locations utilizing one teammate and drones." She added that the results "encourage the expansion of this solution to other GEODIS warehouses in the future."

DC Velocity reported in January 2025 that the project began when a GEODIS customer asked for quarterly cycle counts at one site. It quoted GEODIS industrial engineer Trent McDermott saying the team had 40% of the warehouse counted two weeks into the quarter, and that the first quarterly count took half the usual time with no overtime.

The unit changes as the claim moves. The chief executive wrote "one teammate and drones." Gather AI's GEODIS page headlines "1,200 Locations Scanned per Drone" and, lower down, says "a single drone operator now completes 1,200 location scans per day." DC Velocity wrote that "the drones are able to scan 1,200 locations per day." Servospace arithmetic: 800 counts by four people is 200 per person per day, so 1,200 by one person is six times the per-person rate. The site's daily total rose 50%. The "5X" figure sits between those two readings and none of the sources shows its calculation.

Gather AI's NFI page says drones scanned 51,000 locations at an NFI facility with 75% less cycle count time, and quotes NFI's Cody Merritt on "a notable 5x productivity increase within five months using a single drone." The page does not name the building or date the results. Gather AI's February 2026 funding release lists GEODIS, NFI, Kwik Trip, Axon, dnata, Barrett Distribution and Langham Logistics as customers and says the company doubled its operational footprint and grew bookings 250% in a year, without a base figure for either. Its SEC Form D, filed February 18, 2026, shows $39,999,958 of equity sold with a first sale on December 30, 2025, and revenue marked "Decline to Disclose." TechCrunch reported about 60 employees.

Corvus Robotics: named customers inside vendor releases

Corvus Robotics publishes the most customer-specific numbers, but all of them appear in Corvus-issued releases and case pages. They carry named customer quotes, which is stronger than an anonymous case study and weaker than a customer's own release.

Servospace covered the ASICS announcement in ASICS says Corvus One drones find misplaced inventory 60% faster. Corvus's disclosed fundraising is modest: a Form D filed October 15, 2024 reports $7,507,999 sold of a $7,999,999 offering, and an amended 2022 notice reports $10,061,634 sold. No later Corvus Form D was found on EDGAR as of November 14, 2026, which does not rule out other funding.

Pilot, live, paid or customer confirmed

None of these sources discloses a price, so "paid" below means a repeat or multi-site purchase that a customer described, which implies a commercial deal without proving its terms.

What the denominators show

Labor hours are the most consistent unit across customers, and they are modest per site. Servospace arithmetic, at 40 hours a week:

Count frequency is the other common unit, and the multipliers check out against their own baselines. Southern Glazer's went from quarterly to biweekly, about 6.5 times. ASICS went from twice a year to monthly, six times. Dermalogica's 52 scans at a "600 percent increase" imply a prior pace of about one full pass every seven weeks, consistent with its "up to two months" description.

Throughput figures are scarcer and use different units. GNC's three drones counting 31,000 locations a month work out to about 10,300 locations per drone a month, or about 1,000 a day for the site. Southern Glazer's 35,000 verified discrepancies over about 5,000 flights is about seven per flight. Neither tells a buyer how many locations a drone covers per hour of flight in a building like theirs.

Where the limits show up

The most useful counterweight comes from the customer with the longest record. IKEA Belgium told Warehouse Totaal that because the Winterslag drones fly while people work, IKEA ran a risk assessment with Verity and set the drones to scan only rack level four and higher during operating hours, about 22,000 pallet locations. Lower levels are scanned on Friday evenings and weekend afternoons when no staff are on the floor. Servospace arithmetic: that is about 61% of the 36,000 locations in the drone area during working hours.

IKEA also banned loose stretch-film tails on pallets because plastic caught by the rotors can bring a drone down, and said the drones land on the floor as a precaution if their route to the charger is blocked. Rack maintenance forced two emergency landings in the year before the interview. Winterslag's drones navigate using beacons fixed to the roof, and a trade article relaying Verity's sales team described reflective ceiling markers and about ten minutes of flight between recharges. Corvus says its drones need no markers. Either way, the building has to be kept clear for the drone.

Most systems still fly mainly when aisles are empty. DSV said its drones operate mainly at night. Dermalogica's scans run outside picking hours. ASICS schedules its flights from about 7 p.m. The East Palo Alto IKEA store flies only when staff and customers are out. Night-only operation is a normal design choice, but it caps how many locations a fleet can cover in a day.

Finally, every accuracy figure in this field is a vendor or case-page number: Gather's "99.9%," MSI's 80% to 99%, Verity's "99.992%" reliability quoted by The Almanac. Servospace found no published third-party audit of drone count accuracy from these customers beyond Verity's own marketing of an auditor-approved DSV count, which Servospace did not review.

What to ask a vendor

Limitations

This piece relies on what companies chose to publish. Vendor releases with customer quotes were reviewed by both parties and select favorable results. Several customer figures, including IKEA's "100th" store and the Winterslag details, come from press interviews rather than customer filings. The GEODIS post date was derived from the LinkedIn post identifier. Servospace could not verify Verity's site counts, the DSV hours figure, or any ROI claim, and it did not review Verity's auditor case study. Kroger, Kwik Trip, Axon, Maersk, UPS and other named customers have not, in sources Servospace found, published their own figures on drone use. Other vendors in this market, and inventory scanning by ground robots or forklift cameras, are outside this piece. For related evidence on other warehouse systems, see autonomous forklifts, collaborative picking robots, autonomous tuggers and factory AMRs, and the separate question of delivery drone volumes. More coverage sits on the warehouse robots and drones topic pages.

What would change this assessment

• An Ingka or IKEA update to the August 2024 count of 250 drones at 73 locations.
• A dated DSV figure that defines its drone "hours."
• A customer-issued release, filing or earnings remark from Southern Glazer's, Kroger, GNC or another Corvus customer.
• GEODIS naming the number of U.S. campuses or the drone count.
• Verity separating live sites from trials, or any vendor publishing a price or a third-party accuracy audit.
• A new Form D or funding filing by Corvus Robotics or Gather AI.

Servospace will revisit this guide when one of those appears, and no later than February 2027.