Uber surprised robotics company Serve by selling its entire stake
Uber surprised robotics company Serve by selling its entire stake
Uber 出售其全部股份，令机器人公司 Serve 感到意外
Uber has sold off its entire stake in Serve Robotics, the autonomous delivery robot company that spun out of the ride-hailing company more than five years ago. Uber made the disclosure in a regulatory filing that was first reported by Bloomberg. Uber 已经出售了其在 Serve Robotics 的全部股份。Serve Robotics 是一家自动配送机器人公司，五年前从这家网约车巨头中拆分出来。Uber 在一份监管文件中披露了这一消息，彭博社率先对此进行了报道。
Uber’s exit from Serve Robotics has been brewing for at least a year, according to regulatory filings that show the company reduced its stake in 2025. Still, the final selloff came as a surprise to Serve, which learned about it once it was officially disclosed, according to a source familiar with the events. Uber could not be immediately reached for comment. 根据监管文件显示，Uber 在 2025 年就开始减持股份，其退出 Serve Robotics 的计划至少酝酿了一年。然而，据一位知情人士透露，最终的清仓行为让 Serve 感到意外，他们是在该消息正式披露后才得知的。Uber 目前尚未对此置评。
The divestiture comes as the two once-tight companies have started to diverge on the business side. Serve got its start as Postmates X, the robotics division of the on-demand delivery startup Postmates that Uber acquired in 2020 for $2.65 billion. A year later, the division spun out as an independent company called Serve Robotics, a name taken from the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and piloted by Postmates X. 此次撤资发生在这两家曾经关系紧密的公司在业务层面开始出现分歧之际。Serve 的前身是 Postmates X，这是按需配送初创公司 Postmates 旗下的机器人部门，Uber 于 2020 年以 26.5 亿美元收购了 Postmates。一年后，该部门拆分为一家名为 Serve Robotics 的独立公司，这一名称取自 Postmates X 开发并试点的自动人行道配送机器人。
Uber not only backed Serve, it also struck a partnership with the sidewalk delivery robot firm in 2022. The companies expanded that partnership in May 2023 to deploy up to 2,000 of Serve’s sidewalk bots onto Uber’s app in multiple markets in the United States. Uber 不仅投资了 Serve，还在 2022 年与这家人行道配送机器人公司达成了合作。2023 年 5 月，双方扩大了合作关系，计划在美国多个市场将多达 2,000 台 Serve 人行道机器人部署到 Uber 的应用程序中。
It seems that Uber started pulling back earlier this year, according to comments made earlier this week — and before Uber sold its shares — during Serve’s second-quarter earnings call. “From the first quarter of 2022 through the first quarter of this year, delivery volume through Uber grew for 17 consecutive quarters. In Q2, that trend reversed for the first time. This was caused by lower-than-expected robot utilization,” Serve Robotics co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani said last week during the company’s second-quarter earnings call. 据 Serve Robotics 本周早些时候（在 Uber 出售股份之前）在第二季度财报电话会议上的评论显示，Uber 似乎在今年早些时候就开始撤退了。Serve Robotics 联合创始人兼首席执行官 Ali Kashani 上周在财报电话会议上表示：“从 2022 年第一季度到今年第一季度，通过 Uber 实现的配送量连续 17 个季度增长。但在第二季度，这一趋势首次出现逆转。这是由机器人利用率低于预期导致的。”
Kashani said on the August 6 call that the companies have “differing views” about the operating model to scale its shared autonomous fleet, including in areas such as fleet coordination or merchant integration. He noted that during the same time frame, Serve Robotics saw deliveries with another food delivery partner grow nearly 50% in a single quarter. As a result, Serve didn’t expect that it would make sense to renew the partnership agreement with Uber when it expires in early 2027, Kashani said at the time. Kashani 在 8 月 6 日的电话会议上表示，双方在扩展共享自动驾驶车队的运营模式上存在“分歧”，包括车队协调或商户集成等领域。他指出，在同一时期，Serve Robotics 与另一家食品配送合作伙伴的配送量在单个季度内增长了近 50%。因此，Kashani 当时表示，Serve 认为在 2027 年初与 Uber 的合作协议到期时，续签协议已不再具有意义。
Serve Robotics is one of more than 30 autonomous vehicle technology companies that Uber has either partnered with or invested in over the past several years. Serve Robotics 是过去几年中 Uber 合作或投资的 30 多家自动驾驶技术公司之一。