Serve Robotics is Going Public
Serve Robotics is Going Public
🤖 Robots going public? You don't say.
Friends,
Something really caught my attention. You have to realize who I am? I’m coming from the perspective of an emerging tech covering robotics enthusiast who actively invests in very early stage startups that go public.
This is an Nvidia backed company.
Serve Robotics, the autonomous sidewalk delivery robot startup that spun out of Uber’s acquisition of Postmates, is going public via a reverse merger with a blank-check company (SPAC).
SPACs are historically a total disaster, they are beyond risky. But I really believe in robotic delivery. I believe in a less extent in drone delivery. Serve Robotics has raised $53 million to date.
Serve Robotics is literally an Uber spin-off. Given how Lyft is struggling in recent times, Uber is doing really well in 2023. If Uber Eats has been a success, then the robots are literally coming.
I know people who are stressed to the max and use Uber Eats and would definately prefer to deal with a robot. Sooner than later they will be able to converse like ChatGPT.
Delivery robots maker Serve Robotics is going public via a reverse merger with a blank-check company, and it raised $30 million just before the deal.
So while Generative A.I. has been getting a lot of hype, I’ve actually noticed a lot of innovation in robots, drones and automation in National Defense. I’ve been talking about these things a bit more of late.
From medical to care to logistics robots, it really does transform society in the next two decades of the 21st century to make our smart cities fairly unrecognizable.
The reverse merger with Patricia Acquisition Corp was completed this month, according to regulatory filings. A
Serve raised $30 million in a round led by existing investors Uber, Nvidia and Wavemaker Partners. New investors Mark Tompkins and Republic Deal Room also participated. The startup-soon-to-be-public-company has raised a total of $56 million.
Delivery robots fascinate me and I think they will eventually become important for those short last mile type routes.
There’s actually a long-ish history here. Serve Robotics started its life as Postmates X, the robotics division of on-demand delivery company Postmates. The autonomous sidewalk robots started delivering to Postmates customers in multiple Los Angeles neighborhoods in 2018. It started a commercial service in 2020.
You may recall:
(TechCrunch) Uber acquired Postmates in late 2020 for $2.65 billion. Three months later, Postmates X spun out as an independent company called Serve Robotics. The new name was taken from the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and piloted by Postmates.
Ali Kashani, who led Postmates X, is co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics.
Are Robots going to take over the world?
Kind of not a very scary robot here.
Serve Robotics had 100% of its funds in SVB, the bank that crashed. Suffice to say a SPAC is going to be an interesting ride (no pun intended).
Serve also completed a reverse merger with Patricia Acquisition Corp. ("Patricia"), a public Delaware corporation, whereby 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.
The robot is autonomous (it is not humanly operated) with level 4 autonomy.
Future Plans
Serve said it plans to use the additional financing to enter new markets in the U.S. and advance its technology. The company also plans to scale up its existing 100-robot delivery fleet. Serve has a commercial agreement with Uber to deploy up to 2,000 robots (TechCrunch) with Uber Eats.
Ted Talk
A friendly, autonomous robot that delivers your food
Robotics startups are some of the hardest startups in all of technology. Presumably Uber, Wavemaker Partners and Nvidia know what they are doing. This is a five year old startup.
“Serve's delivery volume has grown over 30% month-over-month on average for the past 18 months,” said co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani in a statement. “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.”
It’s relatively rare to “go public” at such an immature stage of the business. But knowing the markets now with a bull-market in A.I. and BigTech, it might give them the capital required to survive this uncertain period in how their product matures. Having a partner like UberEats is obviously going to help.
Upon the closing of the merger, Uber held a 16.2% stake and Nvidia an 11% stake in Serve, according to regulatory filings.
Generative A.I. might enable more robotics startups to succeed in the coming years.
I could not find what the $ ticker is going to be for Patricia Acquisition Corp/Serve
New Financing brings total capital raised to $56 million since starting in 2021
What I like about this is the cash injection and having partners like Nvidia and Uber with so much ownership means they have major incentives to help Serve Robotics along.
2,000 mini Robots on UberEats Platform
CNBC interview:
They have served over 300 restaurants in their pilot in L.A. They only go seven miles an hour. It’s last mile-delivery, e.g. literally the last mile, around 20 min.
A lot of “AI” in here
They go on the sidewalk but can cross streets
They are super light and have Nvidia chips
Each one costs just “thousands of dollars” (Cheaper than a car at present)
Brings efficiency to last-mile logistics
You open via the UberEats customer
They have a bunch of partners they are testing it with
It’s a logistics company, they are independent
Serve manges to work with independent restaurants as well which I like. It makes me wonder as an investor if a Restaurant POS company wouldn’t want to acquire them? Like Lightspeed Commerce for instance. If they get in trouble, the tech could be acquired.
The bots now operate seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., according to Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve. e.g. West Hollywood trial.
For mini short deliveries this seems so cute. Short tiny alley robots. A different take on tiny AVs.
Serve Robotics developed its own “language” to signal humans, pedestrians, drivers and so forth. How should a robot respond if kids are harassing it? How should it deal with people with visual impairments or other disabilities? It’s weirdly interesting the problems they had to think about.
Why deliver 2 pound burritos in 2 ton cars?
Serve Robotics could be emergency response robots and serve other functions in communities.
Smaller smart robots may serve functions in the future that logistics robots are training to do today.
Serve Robotics might be doing innovation that scales to other things beyond UberEats and commercial missions.
Serve began rolling out its next generation of robots in December, 2022 and says it recently completed its first delivery at Level 4 autonomy. L4 in a controlled environment. But what happens next?
I personally live near a Seven Eleven, I’d be happy to call upon a Serve, I kid you not. Here in Taiwan, they are everywhere.
What I wish Serve Robotics would do is build its own proprietary drones as well. There are a lot of drone companies I’m tracking that are penny stocks.
Serve’s four-wheeled rovers travel on sidewalks and have Level 4 autonomy, meaning they can operate for extended periods without human intervention. If our kids grow up with A.I., they will be navigating a world with more and more robots as well.
I’m totally okay to cross a street and see a Serve Robotics mini on its merry way. It’s almost a feel good story.
Delivery robots paired with remote operators mean they get better and better at doing particular tasks in unpredictable environments. This is also a human-hybrid innovation that is occuring as cities become more like smart cities.
Serve has an ethos of how best to serve everyone?
How will it feel when any robot or device has the social skills of a ChatGPT or Pi? That world is not so far away. What happens to us when delivery robots are social robots. And social robots are everywhere. In this startup there are whispers from that future.