Al Root

Fully autonomous, artificial-intelligence-trained, self-driving robots might be arriving sooner than investors realize.

Thursday, Nvidia-backed autonomous robot start-up Serve Robotics unveiled its third generation of food-delivery robots that will be on the streets for Uber Technologies' Uber Eats division in the first quarter of 2025.

"They move faster, they can stay out in the field longer hours, they can carry more goods," says Serve Robotics CEO Ali Kashani. "Pretty much every parameter that matters they expand on...they cost half to make."

More cargo capacity in this instance means up to four large 16-inch pizza boxes.

Serve Robotics has a handful of second-generation robots, mainly on the West Coast, delivering food for partners such as 7-Eleven. In August, the company disclosed a deal with Uber to deploy 2,000 robots in 2025. About 250 should be delivered in the first quarter.

Serve Robotics won't sell the robots to Uber, it will operate them, functioning a little like a human-delivery contractor. Serve Robotics declined to say how much money they make from deliveries.

The newer generation of robots, built by auto-parts company Magna International, are powered and trained by Nvidia chips.

The third generation of robots has five times more computing power than the prior generation. "They are an embodiment of AI," says Kashani, adding the way the robots are trained, routed, operated, and communicate is all based on AI.

Serve Robotics stock was up 1.5% in premarket trading to $8.79, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were both up less than 0.1%.

Serve Robotics is a relatively small company with a market value of about $380 million, and Uber and Nvidia are big investors with respective stakes of about 14% and 10%, according to Serve Robotics' latest proxy.

The robotics start-up became a publicly traded company in a nonstandard way. It completed a reverse merger with Patricia Acquisition Corp. in August 2023. Shares were listed on the Nasdaq beginning in April 2024.

Since the Nasdaq listing, Serve Robotics stock was up about 180% through Tuesday's trading.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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October 16, 2024 08:25 ET (12:25 GMT)

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