Serve robotics

My only thing is love to get some more clarity and more transparency on... how much of the operations is drive route i think that would be really helpful to get some some clarity around that we get a lot of press releases but not a lot of details because you know in autonomy markets we like to go beyond the headline into the fine print details let's

go in a few food delivery two items first you had a great um podcast with serve robotics ceo and i think that the Quote of the line was that the platform, quote, brings you no value.

All it brings you is a toll tax.

Toll tax.

We start with one of the clearest examples of dependency the robotics industry has given us this year.

Serve Robotics trades on NASDAQ under the ticker Serve.

It builds the four-wheel autonomous robots you've probably seen carrying restaurant orders down city sidewalks.

Serve spun out of Uber in 2021, and Uber Eats became an important anchor for the delivery network.

So let's continue to watch this space.

Now let's put all of these together, because each one provides a very important lesson.

Serve robotics shows what happens when you're too dependent on a single customer for all your revenue.

Fort, on the other hand, shows what happens when you can diversify across 600 different customers to the point that they're dependent on you.

So that bump showing just how valuable, and how much NVIDIA has placed value on, becoming one of the world's biggest venture capitalist.

Well, over time, NVIDIA has invested in CoolWeave, SpaceX, and Serve Robotics, all since gone public, and with gains as a result sitting in NVIDIA's financials.

And NVIDIA also has positions in the likes of Figure AI, that's a startup that applies AI software to autonomous robotic systems, and of course, in the likes of OpenAI, in a deal that's famously fueled debate over circular financing.

Now, private company valuations are notoriously opaque, especially on the early stage, volatile, and they're ridden with timing issues.

If you have 20% of a market and over 20% operating margin, it's a pretty strong company that you have here.

Serve Robotics, which makes delivery robots, you know, the little robots with wheels and with a face that runs mostly in the US, I believe, their gross margin is minus 271%.

So they have a pretty negative margin.

But I guess they also behave as a startup.

So obviously good progress there.

On the flip side, you know, their partner, Uber's ex-partner, Serve Robotics, who got cut and then Uber dumped the stock.

By the way, Uber also dumped a ton of Aurora's stock this week as well.

But Serve, you know, whips around very quickly and does some deals with DoorDash and Grubb.

Um, sidewalk delivery bots, you know, robotaxi companies, um, drone companies like Zipline.

And there seems to be a little bit of movement happening, which is in the same week or within a, a span of a couple weeks of them, you know, striking this deal with Zipline, and it seems like going a little bit heavily into that, they're pulling back on at least one sidewalk delivery robot company, and that's Serve Robotics.

They completely divested, and they've also started using those sidewalk robots a little bit less.

So I'm wondering, Sean, against, you know, that, like, sort of broader backdrop of what's happening, how do you interpret the Uber-Zipline deal?

I, I think around this time last year it partnered with an Israeli drone delivery company called Flytrex.

Uh, that's hasn't been quite working out as planned, and it was a partner with ground-based autonomous delivery robot company Serve Robotics.

But unsurprisingly, Uber and Serve didn't renew their agreement, and that actually ended last week.

I don't think it's a coincidence here that the, these two stories, the, "Hey, s- we ended our agreement with Serve Robotics, and we signed this big deal with Zipp Robotics," or Zipline, excuse me, uh, right ar- happening around the same time.

That, it can't be a coincidence.

So, like, drone delivery, autonomy, these are challenging markets.

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Serve Robotics, right?

Yep

So Uber cut their ties with Serve Robotics, Chris.

Uh-oh.

Yeah.

The, the-

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