Serve Robotics Leverages Food Delivery to Power Nationwide Robot Expansion
Serve Robotics, a startup spun out from Postmates and now backed by Nvidia and Uber, is making a strategic push into robotics at scale by betting on two key drivers: food delivery and access to public capital markets.
According to CEO Ali Kashani, “the only thing worse than being a public company CEO is being a private one right now.” For robotics companies, funding is essential, and in a competitive venture environment, it’s not easy to secure.
Serve recently raised $80 million, giving it enough financial runway through 2026. The company plans to grow its fleet from 100 sidewalk delivery robots in Los Angeles to 2,000 autonomous units operating across major U.S. cities including Dallas and Miami. Once that target is met, the company anticipates reaching operational profitability.
Serve’s approach is unique. Unlike competitors focused on college campuses, Serve is sticking to urban sidewalks. This strategy not only gives the company more real-world complexity to solve for but also allows its bots to collect four times more visual data daily than OpenAI’s GPT-4 vision model, according to Kashani.
In an episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kashani also detailed Serve’s reverse merger in 2024 that took it public—an uncommon route for robotics startups but one that gives it much-needed financial flexibility.
Beyond scaling, Serve has a broader vision: combining ground robots and aerial drones to crack the long-standing challenge of last-mile delivery. With its roots in real-world logistics, data collection, and AI, Serve hopes to position itself as a pioneer in automating delivery at scale.
As Serve moves ahead, all eyes will be on whether its robot-powered food deliveries can carry the company—and the industry—into a profitable, automated future.
