Latest news with #ZachRash
Los Angeles Times
24-07-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
We may not have flying cars, but more food delivery bots are coming to L.A.
The robot invasion is coming to your neighborhood. Coco Robotics, a startup born on the UCLA campus, is about to carpet-bomb the city with hundreds of additional adorable delivery bots recently enhanced with some of the same AI that powers ChatGPT. The company has been testing bots around the city for years, and it is at last confident enough in its technology that it plans to grow tenfold in the coming year, adding 9,000 bots to its current fleet of around 1,000 across the country. Residents of Silver Lake — one of the neighborhoods most recently occupied by delivery bots from Coco and others — give the rolling bots mixed reviews so far. This spring, Coco deployed around 10 food delivery robots to serve the neighborhood's restaurants and residents. The pink, rounded machines represent the latest expansion for a company that started as a dorm room project at UCLA in 2020 and now operates hundreds of robots from Santa Monica to downtown. Silver Lake residents and retailers say their new neighbors are amusing and sometimes annoying. On one of Silver Lake's many hillside streets, a robot delivering a burger from the Window took an unexpected route. Instead of following the most direct path, it turned up a steep hill and tried to climb some stairs before getting stuck. The machine sat motionless while somewhere a customer waited for lunch that would never arrive. 'The robot would've just stayed there forever if I did not cancel,' a former Silver Lake resident said in an interview on Reddit describing how a five-minute delivery turned into a comedy of errors. 'I went without lunch.' Coco chooses neighborhoods based on density, prioritizing areas with restaurants clustered together and short delivery distances as well as places where parking is difficult. 'We wanted to create this vehicle that's very enjoyable for the merchants to use,' said Zach Rash, Coco's co-founder. 'It can deliver a lot of their orders without making our cities more congested, without taking up parking spaces or adding more cars to the road.' He wouldn't share which neighborhoods will be next but asked that people be patient with the bots. They get lost and stuck more often in places they are still getting to know, Rash said. 'With new neighborhoods, that's going to happen more often than our more mature neighborhoods, because we're still finding all the details of the area,' he said. Benjamin Attwell remembers the morning it began. He was working at MidEast Tacos, an Armenian-Mexican fusion restaurant, when six robots were unloaded from a truck on the corner of Maltman Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. He found them fascinating and endearing. He even made TikTok videos of them with music. 'I think it's actually quite a nice addition' to the neighborhood, he said. 'Makes me feel like we're living in the future.' The robots are designed to inspire affection. With their rounded edges and compact bodies, they navigate the neighborhood like cyber pets, stopping for pedestrians and maneuvering around obstacles. The neighborhood has already adopted them like local mascots, Attwell said. 'People kind of treat them almost like their dogs,' he said. 'Kids really like them.' Attwell has his own way to bond with the bots. 'I always pat them on the head for some reason,' he said. 'I don't know why, but I find them adorable.' Kreation Organic, a health-focused cafe that started using Coco robots in April, said they have been good for business. Senior operations manager Jefferson Noe Ortiz said robot deliveries have increased sales as families are drawn to the novelty. The restaurant handles about five robot deliveries per day. Ortiz expects that number to rise. The bots are more polite than the delivery drivers Ortiz deals with daily. 'DoorDash drivers and delivery drivers are sometimes knuckleheads' and tough to deal with, he said. 'The robot is convenient, it doesn't talk back or anything.' Bob Timmermann, a retired librarian, used a robot to send doughnuts to his former colleagues at the Los Angeles Central Library. The process was straightforward: Order through Uber Eats, watch the robot's progress on the app, then unlock the cargo compartment with a phone code when it arrived. 'It was probably easier in the morning commute time to use a robot than a car or scooter,' Timmermann said. Not every delivery goes smoothly. One Silver Lake restaurant worker recalled seeing the robots 'glitching out in intersections,' causing traffic and rolling off curbs, falling over on their sides. 'The future is a lot dumber than I thought it would be,' the worker said. Some people in the neighborhood see the bots as unfair competition. Food delivery driver Julia Roggiero works mostly in West Hollywood and Silver Lake and says she has already noticed an impact. She used to get five or six delivery requests an hour. 'Now, even when I'm in these areas like Santa Monica or Venice, it takes me an hour to get one or two, maximum three,' she said. Roggiero has responded by diversifying into Lyft rides, but the shift represents a broader trend that worries gig economy workers. 'They do deliveries that we can do, so they are taking our income,' she said. Rash says robots aren't necessarily displacing human drivers. 'We have way more demand than we can handle right now,' he said. 'The delivery market is enormous.' Rash says the bots focus on the shortest trips while leaving longer, more lucrative deliveries to human drivers. Coco operates more than 1,000 robots across multiple cities, spanning from Santa Monica and Venice through West L.A., Westwood, Mid-City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Koreatown and the USC area. With more than half a million deliveries completed and millions of miles driven, Coco is targeting 10,000 robots in production next year, a number Rash says would be 'probably five to 10 times bigger than any other autonomous vehicle fleet.' 'We are the cheapest way to deliver anything in a city today, and we can do that profitably,' Rash said. The company makes money through platforms such as Uber Eats for completing orders, direct payments from merchants for deliveries, and leasing parts of the fleet to restaurants and advertising services. But the economic concerns remain real for workers. Eric Ernst, an occasional Instacart delivery driver, says he doesn't want his food delivered by a robot because it has to be taking work away from a human. 'It's neat, you know, it's cool. This is like 'The Jetsons,'' he said. 'But, you know, that's a cartoon.'
Bloomberg
20-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Robot Delivery Service Plans US and Europe Expansion
Coco Robotics, the maker of cooler-sized delivery robots, has raised $80 million in its latest funding round to improve the technology and expand to new cities. CEO Zach Rash discusses how the service has been performing in L.A., Helsinki, and other cities with Caroline Hyde on 'Bloomberg Tech.' (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg
11-06-2025
- Automotive
- Bloomberg
Altman-Backed Robot Delivery Startup Raises $80 Million in Funding
Coco Robotics, a startup that operates a fleet of cooler-sized delivery robots on wheels, has raised $80 million in funding from OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other backers, a sign that automated delivery technology is advancing. The financing, which Coco Robotics plans to announce Wednesday, was led by venture capital firm SNR, with participation from investors including Pelion Venture Partners, Offline Ventures and one of Altman's brothers, Max. With the new funding, Coco Robotics, whose corporate name is Cyan Robotics Inc., has raised more than $110 million to date, including a prior round that was led by OpenAI's Altman. The company declined to provide a valuation. Founded in 2020, Coco Robotics is one of a number of startups deploying robots to expedite deliveries in urban spaces. The Santa Monica, California-based company currently operates a fleet of about 1,300 electric robots in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and Helsinki, CEO and co-founder Zach Rash told Bloomberg News. The company has partnerships with food delivery services DoorDash Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. 's Uber Eats and is starting to work directly with merchants, he said. The startup also announced a tie-up with OpenAI in March. Under the agreement, Coco Robotics is using OpenAI's technology, along with its own software, to help its robots avoid obstacles and make decisions on the fly. It also shares data with OpenAI about delivery trips in urban environments. Altman was not involved in the partnership discussions between OpenAI and Coco Robotics, Rash said. Coco Robotics will use the new funds to improve the technology that helps power its robots and to scale up its fleet, Rash said. He expects to have at least 10,000 robots in operation by the end of next year. Coco Robotics plans to roll out the robots in major cities in the US and Europe, he added, without naming specific locations.
Los Angeles Times
10-04-2025
- Automotive
- Los Angeles Times
DoorDash rolls out food delivery robots in Los Angeles
A robot on wheels could serve up your next meal thanks to a partnership between DoorDash and Coco Robotics that's bringing food delivery robots to Los Angeles sidewalks. The food delivery service DoorDash announced Thursday that eligible customers in Los Angeles and Chicago can order food through their app to be delivered by a small, box-shaped robot with zero emissions. Coco Robotics and similar companies such as Serve Robotics and Starship Technologies have been operating food delivery robots in Los Angeles and other cities for several years. DoorDash's international arm Wolt began a partnership with Coco in Helsinki, Finland this year. 'We're excited to expand our partnership with DoorDash, combining Coco's AI robocourier platform with DoorDash's national scale and reach,' Coco Chief Executive Zach Rash said in a statement. 'This collaboration marks an important step forward in reshaping urban delivery in the U.S.' Coco has a fleet of more than 1,000 delivery robots that are remotely controlled by human operators. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica and was founded in 2020 by two UCLA graduates. Despite the challenges of navigating busy city sidewalks and crosswalks already shared by pedestrians, Coco robots have completed more than 400,000 deliveries and partnered with hundreds of restaurants. Using delivery robots instead of human drivers can save restaurants up to 50% in profits, according to Coco's website. Frustrated or skeptical passersby have kicked the bots or intentionally obstructed their path, while the cities of New York and San Francisco have banned them, on and off, because of congestion concerns. Some opponents say the bots take jobs from human workers and contribute to chaotic urban traffic. DoorDash Labs, the company's robotics and automation arm involved in the Coco partnership, announced a collaboration last year with a drone delivery service called Wing. Wing drones began delivering food in Christiansburg, Va., in March 2024 after launching a pilot program in Australia in 2022. 'Not every delivery needs a two-ton car just to deliver two chicken sandwiches,' Harrison Shih, senior director of DoorDash Labs, said in a statement. 'We believe the future of delivery will be multi-modal, and we're thrilled to partner with Coco to expand sidewalk robot deliveries that complement the Dasher network.' Coco robots will partner with nearly 600 merchants in Los Angeles through the DoorDash app. The robots' median delivery distance is one mile, according to a company spokesperson.
Associated Press
02-04-2025
- Automotive
- Associated Press
Coco Robotics Expands Uber Eats Partnership to Miami
Expansion highlights joint commitment to providing sustainable, efficient last-mile delivery solutions nationwide MIAMI, April 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Coco Robotics, the world's leading food delivery robotics company, announced today that it's launching operations in Miami, starting with delivery partner Uber Eats (NYSE: UBER). This announcement marks Coco's entry into the Southeast market. The service will initially launch in the Wynwood neighborhood and Downtown Miami, with plans to expand to Brickell and Miami Beach in the coming months, as well as other areas throughout 2025. Through the Uber Eats partnership, customers will be able to receive their orders via Coco's emissions-free robots. This builds on Coco's existing partnership with Uber Eats in Los Angeles, where Coco Robotics has already completed over half a million deliveries since it began operations. 'Our expansion launch with Uber Eats marks a milestone in our mission to create a more sustainable and efficient delivery ecosystem,' said Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco Robotics. 'Miami's vibrant food and tech scene make it the perfect market for robotic delivery.' When customers order through Uber Eats, from participating merchants in serviceable areas, they may have their orders fulfilled by Coco's autonomous delivery robots. Customers who receive deliveries via Coco robots will have their tips refunded. 'Autonomous delivery is a key part of our vision for the future of delivery,' said Megan Jensen, Head of Autonomous Delivery Operations at Uber. 'Coco's proven track record and their focus on creating great customer experiences makes them an ideal partner as we expand and continue to popularize robot delivery.' About Coco Robotics Coco Robotics is the world's largest urban robot delivery platform. Founded in 2020, Coco has completed over 500,000 zero-emission deliveries, serving customers in the US and Europe. Coco's mission is to create a more sustainable, reliable, and affordable last-mile logistics solution in cities around the world. For more information about Coco, visit Uber's mission is to create opportunity through movement. We started in 2010 to solve a simple problem: how do you get access to a ride at the touch of a button? More than 58 billion trips later, we're building products to get people closer to where they want to be. By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.
