Waymo Dominates California AV Test Data
Haneda airport welcomes humanoids, Appetronix buys Cibotica, Eclipse raises $1.3B
April was a huge month for robotics, with the industry gathering at our Curbivore conference in Los Angeles: check out video recordings of the discussions now. If you missed the event, fear not: we’re headed to Detroit on June 9 for the next edition of our Urban Autonomy Summit. Be sure to register now. And without further ado, let’s get to the news…
Delivery Robotics, Drones & AVs
Waymo dominated the California DMV’s 11th annual testing data release, as the Alphabet-backed AVer logged over 3.3 million miles in the Golden State in 2025. California has also updated its AV regulations, changing reporting requirements, allowing heavy duty trucks onto public roads and creating a mechanism to ticket misbehaving vehicles.
DoorDash and Wing expanded their drone delivery partnership, now covering consumers who live near Tanger Outlets Locust Grove, on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Travis Kalanick’s Atoms, fka City Storage Systems / CloudKitchens, officially acquired Pronto. This reunites the Uber founder with Anthony Levandowski, who co-founded Google’s self-driving car program, before being indicted with theft of trade secrets.
Starship expanded its partnership with Just Eat, now covering Barnsley, a tech-oriented town between Leeds and Manchester. Meanwhile, Avride began mapping for delivery service in Arlington, VA.
Relatedly, Starship just dropped off its 10 millionth delivery, as it operates 3,000+ bots in 300+ locations across eight countries. Collectively, it’s driven over 22 million kilometers (13.7 million miles.) Growth seems to be steady state, as the company announced nine million last October, and eight million in April 2025.
Tesla expands its human-operated “Robotaxi” network to Houston and Dallas, starting with very small geo-fences.
Flytrex is expanding its partnership with Little Caesars, launching its new, larger Sky2 drone, capable of delivering two large pizzas plus soda and sides (up to 8.8 lbs total.) Sky2 can travel up to four miles, and is thus far averaging four and a half minutes from takeoff to delivery. The two companies have been working together since early 2023; this expanded partnership is first starting in Wylie, Texas, before expanding to additional sites in the DFW Metroplex. While orders are placed via the Flytrex app, the two companies have also launched a direct integration into the pizza maker’s ordering system to further speed up deliveries.
Zipline is also doubling-down on the chain-filled sprawl of North Texas, as it adds brands like Hawaiian Bros, Blaze Pizza and Little Caesars (wow, the emperor is getting awfully promiscuous with his drone providers…) Zipline’s center of operations is in Rowlett, a town directly north of Wylie: talk about busy airspace!
Avride offers a tour of its delivery bot assembly line, as it nears 1,000 robots produced.
Humanoids
Industrial giant Siemens began testing Humanoid’s HMND 01 Alpha, having the bot autonomously perform logistics tasks at a German factory.
Andy Rubin’s Genki Robotics hit unicorn status, valued at around $1 billion following its hot Series A.
Faraday Future finishes certification of its FX Aegis, Futurist and Master humanoids and quadruped bots.
Unitree’s humanoids are on-site at Tokyo Haneda airport, assisting with luggage handling amid a labor shortage.
Back of House Automation
Appetronix acquired Cibotica, as the Donato’s Pizza-backed robotic pizzeria branches into salads and bowls.
Chef Robotics made its 100 millionth meal serving, creating what the company claims is the world’s largest real-world food manipulation dataset and more in-production deformable material training data than any other physical AI startup.
Kiosks, Retail & Self-Checkout
Ottomate News went on site to the National Automatic Merchandising Association’s big annual show: see the machines that caught our eyes.
Industry Trends
Venture fund Eclipse just raised $1.3 billion in new capital, half for early-stage and half for growth-stage startups, with an eye for robotics and physical AI startups.
Meet 2026’s foodtech unicorns.
In Other News
OpenAI mulls spinning out robotics, hardware divisions. How the Pentagon got hooked on AI-powered war machines. Quack: Avride runs over beloved duck in Austin park. Indigo’s Go Bots, formerly made by Clevon, head to Belgium. Mappedin raises $24.5M for indoor mapping. Philly attacks Uber Eats / Avride bots. Uber committing $10 billion to robotaxis, partners with Hertz to launch Oro. Coco expands to San Jose, CA, partners with BlindSquare. Pudu raises nearly $150 million, at a $1.5B+ valuation. Tesla Robotaxi prices jump 41%. Zoox begins testing service at Las Vegas airport. Rocsys raises $13 million for autonomous charging. Serve Robotics’ LA-area fleet hits 500 bots. Einride files registration statement for SPAC. China suspends AV permits after Baidu outage.