DoorDash customers in Los Angeles could soon have their food delivered to them by one of Serve Robotics’ curbside delivery robots. The two companies announced a multi-year partnership on Thursday that would allow them to use autonomous robots to make deliveries across the United States.
The tie-up comes a week after DoorDash unveiled Dot, an autonomous food delivery robot built by the company and first deployed in the Phoenix area. Unlike Serve’s robots, which operate primarily on sidewalks, Dot can transport food and small packages on roads, bike paths and sidewalks at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.
Serve is the latest in a series of emerging technology partnerships for DoorDash, which has partnered with companies including sidewalk robot startup Coco and drone startup Wing. According to Ashu Rege, vice president of autonomy at DoorDash Labs, the company’s robotics and automation division, this is all part of a larger plan to become a platform for multimodal deliveries.
DoorDash isn’t the first app company to take such routes. Uber has partnered with autonomous vehicle companies across its transportation, delivery, and freight businesses, and Serve is one of those companies. Similar to how gig workers work, Serve’s bots will work simultaneously with Uber and DoorDash.
But DoorDash is doing something different here: it’s throwing its own hat into the ring.
Other companies have also tried this strategy. Uber and Lyft have both tried and failed to leverage both the tech stack and the autonomous ridesharing platform. And AV startup Nuro started with a vehicle similar to Dot before realizing that manufacturing is a capital pit.
All three companies have taken the scenic route to realize that it is more profitable to focus on their core technology and offerings.
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Rege thinks DoorDash will be different. The company plans to manufacture Dot on a large scale, but Rege declined to provide specific details. DoorDash had its first profitable year in 2024 and posted record profits in the first half of 2025, driven by a 20% increase in delivery volumes compared to a year earlier. He maintains that the company needs more ways to make deliveries if the company wants to continue serving its growing customer base.
Additionally, Rege believes Dot brings something that other form factors don’t. “We felt there was a gap. On one side you have the sidewalk robots, and on the other side you have the robo-taxis, which are great for moving people, but they don’t solve the problem of delivering that last 10 feet,” he said. “A burrito is not going to walk to your door by itself. And for merchants, they don’t want (…) to go and get this robot that is parked half a block from here.”
Although sidewalk robots can work well in dense urban environments, Rege said Dot will fill the void in “dense suburban deliveries” within a three- to five-mile radius. Dot’s ability to cross roads And sidewalks are “a really key element,” he said.
Of course, one person can do all of this easily, but DoorDash says it plans to reserve its human workforce for more “complex” restaurant, retail, or grocery store trips.
