Sequoia Capital-backed mobility company Bolt Technology OU will begin using robots to deliver customers’ food orders in a new partnership announced Wednesday.
(Bloomberg) — Sequoia Capital-backed mobility company Bolt Technology OU will begin using robots to deliver customers’ food orders in a new partnership announced Wednesday.
The deal with Starship Technologies, which was started by two Skype cofounders, will see “thousands” of robots handling Bolt Food orders across multiple countries starting this year, according to a statement.
The companies didn’t disclose terms of the deal. A Starship executive said in 2018 that its goal was to lower the $5,500 cost of its robots to $2,250.
Bolt, a competitor of Uber Technologies Inc., has more than 100 million customers in Europe, Africa, West Asia and Latin America. Starship, meanwhile, has completed 5 million commercial deliveries around the world, including through a partnership with Grubhub on college campuses. Its founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis both worked at video-conferencing company Skype, where Friis was a co-founder and Heinla was chief architect.
The partnership plans to launch in Estonia, where both Starship and Bolt were founded, and will expand elsewhere later, according to Heinla.
“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Heinla, 51, said of Bolt’s 29-year-old founder, Markus Villig, during a recent Zoom interview. “It is natural that two companies — one doing deliveries and the other building a more efficient way to do deliveries — should cooperate.”
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AI Buzz
Bolt and Starship join a growing number of companies focusing on robotics and artificial intelligence as interest in the space surges. Stocks of US technology companies like Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have surged to record highs this year as investors snap up anything related to AI.
The rapid development of machine-learning tools is sparking calls worldwide for greater scrutiny and regulation of artificial intelligence, but Heinla doesn’t see that altering his long-term ambitions.
“AI-based robots like Starship will take over the urban logistics market,” he said. “People are thinking what things can and can’t be automated by AI, and a robot driving along the road is definitely in that first category.”
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Heinla and Friis founded Starship in 2014, 11 years after setting up Skype along with Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström.
The pair initially funded Starship with their own money but later tapped external investors. They raised $100 million last year from venture firms including NordicNinja and Taavet+Sten at an undisclosed valuation.
The firm is close to being cash-flow positive and now has about 220 employees, according to Heinla. He didn’t disclose its valuation but said it was in the “hundreds of millions” when it last raised money.
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