Coco Debuts New Hardware: Exclusive Photos & Launch Plans
Billion dollar fundraising hauls, crowdfunding hijinks, learning from Zipline's failures
Coco Robotics just launched its brand-new Coco 2 delivery robot hardware. The Ottomate team was on site for the launch event, held in Los Angeles’ Venice Beach neighborhood. We’ve got the month’s biggest automation and robotics stories up first; read on for all the exclusive details from Coco’s premiere.
Delivery Robotics, Drones & AVs
Amazon Prime Air launched in Kansas City, Kansas, moving packages of up to 5 pounds to destinations within 7.5 miles of its fulfillment center eight miles west of downtown. (See map.)
Just Eat and Starship are launching a collaboration, partnering on delivery robotics in the United Kingdom. The two companies are initially launching in Sunderland, a town of 288,000 in Northeastern England.
Delivery drone startup Manna is partnering with Uber Eats to launch in Ireland, followed by an expansion to other EU markets. This is Uber’s first drone partner in the European Union.
Speedbird Aero raised $5.8 million to expand drone deliveries in Brazil, with funders including local 3PD iFood.
Waymo had a huge month: launches in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando; hitting 200 million autonomous miles driven; beginning tests in Chicago; and starting deployments of its sixth-generation Driver technology.
Uber also made the case for why it — and not players like Waymo or Zoox — could win the long-term AV race. In a supplement to its 2025 earnings, the company noted it performed better in markets where it launched robotaxi services, while also beating its competitors’ purported benchmarks. The ridehail giant is also investing $100M in new robotaxi charging infrastructure, while debuting its Autonomous Solutions division.
In other AV news: Senate Republicans push the SELF DRIVE Act forward; Bedrock Robotics raised $270M for autonomous excavators; Zoox began testing in Columbus, Ohio; Tesla’s Robotaxi network seems to be driving 4x worse than humans; Aurora’s autonomous trucks are hitting the highways between Arizona and Texas; Wayve raised $1.2 billion.
Humanoids
LimX raised $200 million in Series B funding, with backing from Stone Venture, JD, and Oriental Fortune Capital. The Chinese startups’s Tron 1 biped retails for $15k and can purportedly ski.
Is this an arms race?! Austin-based Apptronik has raised $520 million, at a $5B+ valuation. Backers include B Capital, Google, Mercedes-Benz, John Deere and the Qatar Investment Authority. This extension of their earlier round brings their total Series A funding to just shy of $1 billion.
Back of House Automation
After just three months in service, Amazon is pulling the plug on project Blue Jay, a multi-armed robot meant to facilitate same-day orders. The company will instead focus on its lower-cost Orbital platform.
Walmart Data Ventures launched Scintilla In-Store, a platform for supplier field reps that connects data streams to in-store actions.
Burger King is piloting an AI chatbot — codenamed Patty and powered by OpenAI — in employee headsets at select locations.
Farm & Sourcing Automation
With immigrant farm workers being cruelly forced out of the country, America’s big agriculture companies are facing a labor shortage, and they in turn are turning to robots to keep cows milked and crops picked.
Kiosks, Retail & Self-Checkout
VenHub’s CEO announced the autonomous vending company is planning to file a direct listing on the Nasdaq, as a former exec from Amazon’s Just Walk Out project has joined the company. See our earlier review of VenHub’s mechanical mini-mart.
Burger chain White Castle is getting into kiosks, partnering with Evolvending and Just Baked to bring its microwaved sliders to airports in Florida and Massachusetts.
Industry Trends
Do too many robotics startups rely overly heavily on crowdfunding investors? Hunterbrook did a deep dive into the phenomenon, noting how less sophisticated investors can be suckered into backing companies with slim track records and scant operations. While the report specifically mentions Miso Robotics, we’ve seen many other companies in this sector rely on similar tactics.
In Other News
Learning from Zipline’s failures and successes. Hyundai’s making a $26B bet on robots and America. Meet Hyundai’s MobED robotics platform. Hesai and Grab collaborate on lidar. Alibaba launches open source RynnBrain. Ukrainian dual-use drones deliver cookies and perform combat. Toyota and Pony.ai start production of bZ4X robotaxi. Avride gets into ads. ODOT trials autonomous crash trucks to protect road workers. Teledyne FLIR debuts Lepton XDS thermal + visual camera. DoorDash launches Gemini for Android integration. LA Times looks at Next Robot. Can radar be used for end-to-end autonomy? Everyware restaurant self-checkout kiosks head to Hong Kong. Do healthcare drones pass the ROI smell test?
Coco Robotics Launches Coco 2 Delivery Bot
Los Angeles-based delivery bot biggie Coco Robotics revealed its new Coco 2 robot, at an exclusive event near Venice Beach, late last week. The larger robot features much-improved autonomy, IPX6 weather resilience (a vital factor for a company operating in both Miami and Helsinki) and the ability to operate on streets, bike lanes and sidewalks. While Coco has long prioritized lean and affordable hardware, the new version — which costs “around 10% of a car” — definitely has some higher-end additions, including an air blade on its cameras, heated glass and a hardware keypad for unlocking the storage compartment.
