Serve ($SERV) podcast mentions
Sean wrote this story, so I'll, I'll throw it back to him in a moment, but to me, I want to zoom out just a little bit to look at what's happening with Uber. So we know that they've made a ton of deals with a lot of different autonomous vehicle companies, 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 span of a couple of 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?
Kirsten Korosec — Equity · The DOJ is investigating a16z. What does this mean for venture capital? · 2026-08-21Yeah, that seems to be the, the recurring theme with just about anything autonomous these days is where these, these early testing versions of it are in most cases uneconomical for reasons, one reason or another, you know, maybe the manufacturing isn't up to snuff so that it can build at scale. Maybe the AI or the autonomous software that it's using isn't quite there yet. And so, you know, more data points to make it more accurate and things like that. So lots of, like, similar to what we're talking about with agentic AI is like that chicken and egg sort of situation. Like, how does, how does one scale? Fortunately, companies like Uber and Amazon can throw lots of money at this stuff. And sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. And that's actually what I wanted to get at here because this isn't the first deal that Uber has made with autonomous delivery companies. I think around this time last year, it partnered with an Israeli drone delivery company called Flytrex. That 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 they, these two stories, the, hey, we ended our agreement with Serve Robotics and we signed this big deal with Zip Robotics. Or zipline, excuse me, right, or happening around the same time. It can't be a coincidence. So like drone delivery, autonomy, these are challenging markets, you know, who's winning, who's doing well. And it seems like, you know, these partnerships and agreements can come and go at any given time. So guys, as investors, clearly this is an exciting industry that's likely to do incredible things in terms of growth, but what are you looking for in this industry as a, like, what makes it a good company in this industry?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Is AI the Answer to Big-Box Retail’s Woes? · 2026-08-20Well, I mean, as I mentioned a minute ago, I want to see that the economics work. If you remember when Amazon first launched 2-day free shipping, that was a money loser for the company for years. It did not make economic sense. Companies like Amazon and others have all invested a lot of money and a lot of time and research efforts in building out the logistic networks. So things like free overnight shipping don't kill their profits and actually make sense economically. So I'm wondering if it's going to be that big of a curve when it comes to, you know, drone delivery and robotics and things like that. And, but beyond that, there are a few other questions I have. There's, there's going to be a big regulatory runway right now. Companies like Amazon, like Zipline have, you know, regulatory permits to fly drones. There's going to be more regulatory hurdles when there's a million of these going through the air at any given time. So there's going to be big regulatory hurdles that will need to be addressed. And I'd like to see them build out their partnership relationships. The big lesson you can get from Serve is that being too reliant on any one platform like Uber Eats for your demand is not a long-term sustainable model. And Zipline's doing it right with several big partnerships before they even really launch.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Is AI the Answer to Big-Box Retail’s Woes? · 2026-08-20No, but I mean, clearly very large aspirations here. And I think there's actually some pretty cool things you could do. I was just frantically Googling, trying to remember the name of the company. Serve Robotics. They have the little delivery bots that go on your sidewalk. They're public and they're only worth $450 million, which is like for the public markets, like a plug nickel and a piece of gum.
Alex — This Week in Startups · These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next Unicorns · 2026-08-12