Here come the delivery robots.
Coco Robotics, the maker of four-wheeled autonomous sidewalk rovers, has raised $80 million to help grow its fleet. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and an existing Coco investor, contributed to the fundraising round.
About 1,000 Coco bots are currently making deliveries in Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami and Helsinki. The company plans to expand into more markets and expects to have thousands of bots on the ground by the end of the year, which it says will give it the largest autonomous vehicle fleet in the world.
Coco’s bots are powered by electricity and use artificial intelligence to navigate cities, though they are monitored from afar by humans who can step in if needed. Each bot has a capacity of 90 liters, or about six extra-large pizzas, and a delivery radius of 1 to 2 miles. They have completed more than 500,000 deliveries to date.
The company integrates with DoorDash and Uber Eats, and restaurants can opt in to having Coco bots deliver orders placed through those apps. Orders come in like any other delivery order would. Employees then load the food into a robot and send it on its way. The customer unlocks their food using a code in their delivery app.
Autonomous delivery promises to solve some of the biggest issues with delivery. Coco says its bots are faster than human delivery people and cost less for restaurants to use, though it did not say just how much operators can save.
The bots also eliminate clutter in the restaurant and are more punctual than humans, according to the company. And customers don’t have to tip.
They’re also emission-free, which reduces their impact on the environment.
Serve Robotics, a rival delivery company backed by Uber and chipmaker Nvidia, raised $86 million of its own late last year. It has a deal to deploy 2,000 robots with Uber Eats in multiple U.S. markets.
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