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Serve Robotics, the sidewalk delivery robot company backed by Nvidia and Uber, is expanding into a new category with its latest acquisition: healthcare. <\/p>\n
Los Angeles-based Serve Robotics<\/a> announced Tuesday it was acquiring Diligent Robotics<\/a>, a startup that builds robots named Moxi designed to assist in hospitals by delivering lab samples, supplies, and other tasks. The deal values Diligent\u2019s common stock at $29 million.<\/p>\n Diligent Robotics was founded in 2017 by Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu and has raised more than $75 million in venture capital \u2014 most recently raising a $25 million funding round in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n The acquisition marks Serve\u2019s first foray beyond its food-delivery roots. The sidewalk delivery robots company was incubated inside food delivery company Postmates in 2017. The project continued after Uber bought Postmates<\/a>, before spinning off in 2021. Serve went\u00a0public in April 2024 via a reverse merger<\/a>.<\/p>\n Serve co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani doesn\u2019t view the acquisition as a big deviation from the company\u2019s initial target.<\/p>\n While the company hasn\u2019t focused specifically on healthcare thus far, how Diligent\u2019s robot Moxi operates does fit squarely into the company\u2019s thesis around last-mile delivery and robots that can navigate alongside humans, Kashani told TechCrunch in a recent interview. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is a kind of a classic example of a prepared mind meets opportunity,\u201d Kashani said. \u201cRobots that are moving among people is the broader opportunity for us. Once you solve the problem, which is how to get robots to seamlessly move among people as autonomous machines, then you can bring it to a lot of other environments. We knew that we wanted to do this someday.\u201d<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Healthcare wasn\u2019t a specific goal for expansion either, Kashani said, but rather the companies were introduced at the perfect time. Diligent was looking to scale and Serve was opportunistically looking into new areas.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love the team; they have very similar DNA to us, which is, rather than building in a lab, they build in real life,\u201d Kashani said. \u201cIt just seems like it\u2019s really aligned with our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n Diligent will continue to operate relatively independently within Serve, Kashani said. Diligent will tap into Serve\u2019s software and tools to help them work toward scale and the companies will share tech and collaborate, he added.<\/p>\n Kashani said this isn\u2019t a pivot for the company, nor does it mean that Serve is looking to acquire more startups, he added. Kashani, who emphasized that Serve is still very focused on its sidewalk-delivery robots, said they would \u201ckeep our eyes open\u201d for interesting companies as potential partners, not necessarily acquisition targets.<\/p>\n Serve was able to grow its fleet of robots in 2025 from 100 to more than 2,000, he said. The company also signed a partnership with DoorDash<\/a> to facilitate some of their deliveries in Los Angeles in October.<\/p>\n \u201cOur sidewalk business is what\u2019s fueling everything,\u201d Kashani said. \u201cIt\u2019s creating the technology. It\u2019s one of the largest autonomous fleets in the world right now and developing that helps us create everything that we need in other applications.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n