Uber surprises Serve Robotics by offloading its entire stake
Uber has sold its complete stake in autonomous delivery robot company Serve Robotics, a firm it spun off and partnered with for years. Serve says it only learned of the sale once it was officially disclosed.
Uber has divested its entire stake in Serve Robotics, the autonomous sidewalk delivery robot company that originated within Uber more than five years ago. The move was disclosed in a regulatory filing first reported by Bloomberg.
Regulatory filings show Uber had already been trimming its stake throughout 2025, suggesting a full exit had been in the works for some time. Even so, the final sale reportedly caught Serve Robotics off guard — the company only found out once the sale was officially disclosed, according to a source familiar with the matter. Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shared origins
Serve Robotics began as Postmates X, the robotics arm of delivery startup Postmates, which Uber acquired in 2020 for $2.65 billion. The division spun out as an independent company a year later, taking its name from the sidewalk delivery robot it had developed. Uber backed the new company and, in 2022, formed a partnership to deploy its bots through the Uber app. That partnership expanded in May 2023 to cover up to 2,000 robots across multiple U.S. markets.
Signs of a cooling relationship
Cracks in the partnership became apparent earlier this year. During Serve's second-quarter earnings call on August 6, co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani said delivery volume through Uber had grown for 17 straight quarters before reversing in the second quarter, a drop he attributed to lower-than-expected robot utilization. Kashani said the two companies now hold differing views on how to scale their shared autonomous fleet, citing disagreements over fleet coordination and merchant integration.
He added that deliveries through another food delivery partner grew nearly 50% over the same period. Given that divergence, Kashani said Serve does not expect to renew its partnership with Uber when the current agreement expires in early 2027. Serve Robotics is one of more than 30 autonomous vehicle technology companies Uber has partnered with or invested in over the past several years.
