Nvidia and Uber-backed Serve Robotics has raised $80 million in a direct providing of 4.2 million shares of widespread inventory, cash that may assist the corporate prolong its runway by way of 2026 and scale its fleet from the 100 robots on the streets of Los Angeles right now to the two,000 Serve hopes to deploy by the tip of 2025 in a number of U.S. cities.
“We’re not taking the more cash to simply burn by way of it within the subsequent 12 months,” Serve CFO Brian Learn informed TechCrunch. “That is the long run coffer to assist us as we get past these 2,000 robots.”
The $80 million, which got here from unnamed institutional buyers, is on prime of the $86 million in gross proceeds Serve raised collectively in December 2024 by way of a mix of a beforehand filed at-the-market facility and train of warrants, bringing the startup’s complete funding raised during the last 12 months to $247 million.
The sidewalk supply robotic firm, which went public earlier this 12 months through a reverse merger, expects the $80 million providing to shut on Tuesday, topic to sure closing circumstances. Serve wouldn’t say what it intends to make use of the gross proceeds for particularly, solely noting it might go in direction of working capital to construct the enterprise and deploy robots.
Serve was extra forthcoming with its plans for the $86 million raised in December, which is able to go in direction of self-funding tools investments in order that the startup can remove the necessity for tools financing and related servicing prices.
“I’ve been attempting to get our price of capital as little as attainable, and one of the simplest ways [previously] for us to try this was to finance our robots, which comes with pursuits prices and deposits and money locked up and safety pursuits on the {hardware},” Learn mentioned. “We’ve moved previous that now, so we get higher money movement. We now have possession on these robots now, so we’re actually giving ourselves some extra flexibility in our monetary path.”
“This funding not solely solidifies that strategy from right now, but in addition we at the moment are positioning ourselves from what 2026 and 2027 goes to begin to appear like,” Learn continued.
Immediately, Serve has about 100 robots doing deliveries in Los Angeles for round 300 eating places through the Uber Eats and 7-Eleven platforms. In October, the corporate started a trial in partnership with Wing in Dallas to mix sidewalk robotic supply with drone supply.
Serve plans to place a further 250 robots on the streets of Los Angeles within the first quarter of 2025, and as much as 2,000 bots in a number of U.S. cities by the tip of subsequent 12 months by way of a contract with Uber Eats. Learn famous that the corporate expects to get to money movement positivity from an operational standpoint as soon as that fleet of two,000 is at full utilization.
This story has been up to date to incorporate extra context and data from Serve Robotics CFO Brian Learn.
