Serve Robotics is no longer an Uber-anchored sidewalk story. The second-quarter print forced a partner reset that recasts the equity as a cash-funded autonomy platform hunting for utilization after its founding channel stalled. Co-founder Ali Kashani told investors that Uber Eats volume fell for the first time in seventeen straight quarters, and that Serve does not currently expect to renew the agreement when it expires in early 2027. Uber later sold its remaining stake. The debate is whether DoorDash, hospital robots, advertising wraps, and a new merchant device can replace the utilization model that built the fleet.
Revenue rose to $3.2 million, a nine percent sequential lift that still missed the run-rate implied by the old full-year target. Management cut that target to a band of $9 million, stripping out a second-half Uber ramp that the June print no longer supported. Recurring work already exceeded half of sales, and advertising supplied nearly half of food-delivery revenue, which is why fleet gross margin improved even as deliveries through Uber fell. Cash and marketable securities still totaled $240 million after an at-the-market raise that added $85 million of equity in the first half. The income statement nonetheless absorbed a $64 million GAAP loss as operating spend stayed an order of magnitude above the revenue base.
Daily active robots slipped to 792 from the prior quarter even as the deployed fleet sat near two thousand units across more than forty cities. DoorDash volume rose nearly fifty percent in the quarter and again from June into July, and the August update added Grubhub through Wonder in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Alexandria. Diligent Robotics, closed in January, contributed contracted indoor hospital work through the Moxi fleet. First-half operating cash outflow reached $85 million, so the liquidity cushion is real and finite. The next year turns on whether those substitute channels lift revenue per robot hour enough to justify the burn.