Serve Robotics Soars on New Multi-Year DoorDash Delivery Deal

Serve Robotics SERV shares surged Thursday after the San Francisco-based autonomous delivery company announced a multi-year partnership with DoorDash DASH, expanding its sidewalk robot delivery network across the U.S.

Under the new deal, DoorDash customers in Los Angeles ordering from select stores and restaurants may now receive their orders via Serve's small, self-driving robots instead of human couriers. The companies plan to gradually roll out the service to additional U.S. cities in the coming months.

The partnership marks a major expansion for Serve, which until now had worked exclusively with Uber (UBER) since 2021. This enables us to go to cities where DoorDash is the dominant player, said Serve co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani. Now that we have a significant fleet size, we can provide more supply and we're looking for more demand so our robots always have jobs.

Serve currently operates in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Atlanta, with over 100,000 deliveries completed from more than 2,500 restaurants. Earlier this week, the company deployed its 1,000th third-generation robot and remains on track to hit 2,000 units by the end of 2025.

The move comes as food-delivery firms race to adopt automation for faster and cheaper last-mile logistics. DoorDash recently unveiled its own in-house delivery robot, Dot, which joins a growing lineup of tech partners including Alphabet's GOOGL drone unit Wing and sidewalk bot startup Coco.