Nvidia and Uber-supported Serve robotics raised $80 million in a direct offering of 4.2 million shares of common stock, money that will help the company expand its runway through 2026 and expand from 100 robots it hopes to deploy to 2,000 on the streets of Los Angeles today. End of 2025 in multiple US cities.
Serv CFO Brian Reid told TechCrunch, “We're not taking more money to burn through it over the next year. “It's long-term money to help us outgrow these 2,000 robots.”
$80 million, which came from undisclosed institutional investors, topped the list $86 million in gross revenue Combined serving in December 2024 through a combination of a previously filed market facility and warrant exercise, bringing the startup's total funding over the past 12 months to $247 million.
The sidewalk delivery robot company, which went Public earlier this year through a reverse mergerThe $80 million offer is expected to close on Tuesday, subject to certain conditions. Serv could not say what specifically it intends to use for the gross proceeds, only stating that it will go toward working capital to build businesses and deploy robots.
Serving was more forthcoming with an $86 million plan unveiled in December, which would go toward self-funding equipment investments so startups could eliminate the need for equipment financing and associated service costs.
“I'm trying to get our cost of capital as low as possible and in the best possible way [previously] For us to do that was to finance our robot, which comes with interest costs and deposits and cash lock ups and security interests in the hardware,” says Reid. “We're past that now, so we get better cash flow. We now own these robots, so we're really giving us some more flexibility in our financial direction.”
“This funding not only solidifies that approach from today, but we're now going to start looking at ourselves in 2026 and 2027,” Reed continued.
Today, Los Angeles has nearly 100 robots serving nearly 300 restaurants through the Uber Eats and 7-Eleven platforms. In October, the company began a trial Partnership with Wing To combine drone delivery with sidewalk robot delivery in Dallas.
It plans to have an additional 250 robots on the streets of Los Angeles by the first quarter of 2025, and up to 2,000 robots in multiple U.S. cities by the end of next year. Agreement with Uber Eats. Read on to note that the company expects to be cash flow positive from an operational perspective once the fleet of 2,000 is fully utilized.
This story has been updated to include additional context and information from Serv Robotics CFO Brian Reed.