Serve Robotics

Serve Robotics started as the in-house delivery droid project of online food delivery operator Postmates in 2018 and was spun off as a standalone startup in March 2021. It offers a sidewalk delivery robot that uses a combination of ultrasonics, LiDAR, sonar, computer vision, time-of-flight cameras, GPS, and AI-based computing to navigate at Level 4 autonomy (i.e., fully autonomous but limited to specific locations or conditions)—an industry first. Serve Robotics’ third-gen droid can carry up to 57.5 lbs. traveling 48 miles on a single charge, at a maximum speed of 11 mph.

Serve Robotics’ operations span across geographies including California (Los Angeles), Texas (Dallas), Canada, and Australia. The company claimed to have completed 20,000+ commercial deliveries as of February 2023. The company anticipates deploying up to 2,000 robots on the Uber Eats platform across multiple US markets in 2025.

The company generated revenue of USD 207,545 and incurred an operating loss of USD 20.7 million in 2023.

Key customers and partnerships

Serve Robotics’ deployment partners included Pink Dot, Uber Eats, Brinker International, Piestro, Pizza Hut Canada, 7-Eleven, Shake Shack (through Uber Eats), and Wing (Alphabet's drone delivery unit).

The company has product partnerships with 1) DriveU.auto to integrate the latter’s teleoperation and connectivity platform into its droids (June 2024); 2) automotive supplier Magna International, to manufacture delivery droids (April 2024); 3) Ottopia, an Israeli company developing remote assistive tech for autonomous vehicles, to integrate teleoperation software in its delivery droids (September 2023); and 4) LiDAR maker Ouster to obtain LiDAR sensors for its robots (January 2022; expanded in June 2024).