A developer of autonomous delivery robots has announced today [10 August 2023] a US$30m (£23.6m) funding round and that, with the new financing, it will officially be going public.
The recent funding round will bring the company’s total funds raised to date to more than US$56m (£44.1m) after seven rounds of financing, according to start-up database Crunchbase.
Financing was led by existing investors, which included Uber, Nvidia and Wavemaker Partners, with some participation from new lenders.
Serve Robotics resulted from ride-hailing service operator Uber’s purchase of Postmates; it announced a reverse merger today in addition to the funding.
The company will be ‘reverse merging’ with Patricia Acquisition Corp, a public Delaware corporation. It then became a wholly owned subsidiary of Patricia, which afterwards changed its name to Serve Robotics.
It was also announced today that Uber VP of delivery and head of Americas, Sarfraz Maredia, had joined the company’s board.
“We’re thrilled that our core strategic partners Uber and Nvidia continue to back Serve as we work to bring sustainable, autonomous delivery to every doorstep in the next five years,” said Dr. Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics.
“Serve’s delivery volume has grown over 30% month-over-month on average for the past 18 months. 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.”
In a statement, a company spokesperson added: “This funding will enable Serve to enter new markets across the U.S. and support the scaling of our robotic delivery fleet as we work to deploy up to 2,000 robots on the Uber Eats platform”.
