Postmates X, the robotics division of the on-demand delivery startup that Uber acquired last year for $2.65 billion, has officially spun out as an independent company called Serve Robotics.
Serve Robotics, a name taken from the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and piloted by Postmates X, has raised a Series A led by venture capital firm Neo with participation by Uber and other investors.
Serve Robotics will continue spearheading the development of a new form of mobility by creating autonomous robots to deliver goods in urban environments. Its fleet has already proven its viability by serving thousands of households in Los Angeles and has been especially useful during the pandemic by providing customers with contactless delivery.
The new company is launching with 60 employees with headquarters in San Francisco and offices in Los Angeles and Vancouver.
Serve Robotics will be run by Vancouverite Ali Kashani, who headed up Postmates X.
Kashani graduated from UBC with a PhD in Robotics and Computer Vision in 2012. He founded a residential electricity monitoring startup named Neurio, which was acquired in 2015. Not long after that Kashani founded a startup named Lox which was quietly acquired by Postmates in 2017.
“While self-driving cars remove the driver, robotic delivery eliminates the car itself and makes deliveries sustainable and accessible to all,” said Dr. Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. “Over the next two decades, new mobility robots will enter every aspect of our lives—first moving food, then everything else.”
I saw one of these guys cruising on National in Los Angeles. As it approached me, I stopped my cycling and got a video of it which I made into a YouTube clip. Probably the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time. It was at the corner of National and Sepulveda.