San Francisco-headquartered Serve Robotics, a leading autonomous sidewalk delivery company, has snapped $30 million in a funding round. With this, the total funding raised by the company accounts for over $56 million.
The round was led by existing investors, including Uber, NVIDIA, and Wavemaker Partners (which backed Dat Bike), with participation from new investors Mark Tompkins and Republic Deal Room. New investors Mark Tompkins and Republic Deal Room also participated in this round.
Serve Robotics will use the funds to enter new markets across the United States and further advance its industry-leading, AI-powered mobility platform. The company will also begin scaling up its robotic fleet to meet massive and rapidly-increasing customer demand for last-mile automation. The company also has a commercial agreement to deploy up to 2,000 robots with Uber Eats.
“We’re thrilled that our core strategic partners Uber and NVIDIA continue to back Serve as we work to bring sustainable, autonomous delivery to every doorstep in the next five years,” said Dr. Ali Kashani, Co-founder and CEO of Serve. “Serve’s delivery volume has grown over 30% month-over-month on average for the past 18 months. Becoming a public company provides broader access to capital, supporting our continued growth as we ramp up our partnership with the world’s largest food delivery platform and expand other enterprise partnerships.”
Follows a merger with Patricia
Besides this fundraising and conversion of existing convertible notes, Serve Robotics also completed a reverse merger with Patricia Acquisition Corp., a public Delaware corporation. Notable, Serve became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Patricia. Following the transaction, Patricia changed its name to Serve Robotics, Inc. and will continue the historic business of Serve.
Self-driving robots to deliver and serve food
Founded by Ali Kashani and Dmitry Demeshchuk in San Francisco, Serve Robotics the autonomous sidewalk delivery robot startup started as Postmates X, the robotics division of Postmate, an on-demand delivery company, and started delivering to Postmates customers in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Following Uber’s acquisition of Postmates in late 2020 for $2.65 billion, Postmates X spun out as Serve Robotics. It was named after the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and piloted by Postmates.
Serve Robotics is shaping the future of sustainable and self-driving delivery. It designs, develops, and operates zero-emissions robots that serve people in public spaces, starting with food delivery. It is set out to build a robotic delivery experience that delights customers, improves reliability for merchants, and reduces vehicle emissions to zero.
