New AVs & Delivery Bots Hit NYC, Chicago, Munich and More
Tesco trials avocado ripeness scanners, China installs more robots than the rest of the world combined
Another month — another huge wave of expansions for autonomous vehicles and delivery robots. But other machines are getting in on the action too: read on for all the details on big humanoid funding rounds, vending kiosks in novel venues, and some encouraging investment stats.
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Delivery Robotics, Drones & AVs
DoorDash gets into robotics with the launch of a “smart-scale” and Dot delivery robot. Modern Delivery sat down with Ashu Rege, DoorDash’s Vice President of Autonomy, to get all the details.
Uber invests in and partners with Flytrex, bringing drone delivery of Uber Eats to Texas.
Munich-based Fernride raises €18M for autonomous logistics, with a partial pivot towards military applications.
Uber partners with Chinese AV startup Momenta, bringing robotaxis to Germany in 2026. Meanwhile, a partnership with Avride may bring autonomous Hyundai IONIQ 5s to Dallas.
Serve Robotics buys assets of Voysys and Phantom Auto, enhancing its teleoperations capabilities.
Lyft partners with May Mobility to bring autonomous Toyota Siennas to Atlanta, while working with Waymo in Nashville.
Amazon-owned Zoox opens Las Vegas-area robotaxi service to public users.
Serve Robotics expands to Chicago, eying a market that Coco recently entered.
Stockholm-based Einride raised $100 million for autonomous freight solutions.
Robotic mysteries: Swiss police “arrest” RIVR’s canine-like delivery bot, while Magna unexpectedly ends its delivery bot testing in Toronto early.
Humanoids
Chinese humanoid developer UBTECH secures $1 billion line of credit from Infinity capital to boost production.
X Square Robot - maker of the Wall-OSS open-source foundation model and the Quanta X2 robot - closed on over $100M in Series A+ financing.
Figure AI secured over $1 billion in capital commitments for its Series C funding round, at a $39B post-money valuation.
Dyna Robotics closed a $120 million Series A funding round, led by Robostrategy, CRV and First Round Capital, for its general-purpose foundation model that’s set to improve robotic uptime across uses like hotels, restaurants, laundromats and gyms.
London-based Humanoid launched the HMND 01 Alpha, a dual-armed mobile manipulator, built for industrial use.
Back of House Automation
Red Lobster rolls out AI-powered voice ordering, in partnership with SoundHound.
Presto teams up with ElevenLabs to add new language support for voice-powered ordering.
Industry Trends
China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined. (Factories in the United States installed 34k.)
VC investment in robotics is bouncing back in 2025, with deal value up 170.5% QoQ and 263.2% YoY at the close of Q2.
European robotics funding may break records in 2025, with over €1 billion (~$1.2 billion) raised through early August.
Kiosks & Self-Checkout
British supermarket Tesco trials avocado ripeness scanners, taking the squeezing and guess work out of shopping.
Circus begins production of its fourth-generation high-volume food production robot; the CA-1 consists of over 29,000 components.
Long Beach, CA — population 450k — becomes the first American city to regulate self-checkout machines, mandating at least one employee for every three kiosks.
Amazon shutters all Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the United Kingdom, in a blow to its checkout-free ambitions.
Target launches new self-checkout machines tailor-made for blind users.
Alberts brings its meal vending kiosks to Therme Bucharest spa.
In Other News
Tesla seeks permits to bring ridehailing to Bay Area airports. Amazon Robotics’ ViTa-Zero solves zero-shot visuotactile challenge. Robotics startup Physical Intelligence eyes $5 billion fundraising. DoorDash tests drone deliveries in SF. Waymo extends NYC testing. Instacart Caper Carts gain new features, as they head to Morrisons and ShopRite. Kroger eyes cuts to its Ocado-powered automated fulfillment network. Bot Auto finishes uncrewed truck validation run. Waymo and SFO airport finalize “Testing and Operations Pilot Permit.” Zoox begins testing in Washington, D.C. Uber buys data labeling startup Segments.ai. Nvidia eyes $500M investment in British AV startup Wayve. Famed roboticist Rodney Brooks thinks the current humanoid funding boom is a bubble due to fundamental hardware shortcomings. Nobody asked for this: Samsung to put ads on its smart fridges.