NVIDIA Acquires Significant Stake! Last-Mile Robotics Company Serve Robotics Soars Nearly 240%
Despite the ongoing gloom in the U.S. stock market on Friday, shares of a small-cap robotics company called Serve Robotics soared nearly 240%, hitting a new high since its "reverse takeover" listing in mid-April this year. The driving force behind this surge is related to AI giant NVIDIA.
According to an announcement released by Serve Robotics after the previous trading day's close, NVIDIA, a shareholder of the company, converted the issuer's convertible bonds into 1.05 million common shares at a price of $2.42 per share on April 22, 2023. Following this capital increase, NVIDIA's stake in Serve Robotics rose precisely to 10%, triggering the large holding mechanism under U.S. securities law.
Here's a small detail: NVIDIA used a 13G form for this transaction. This form typically indicates that the investor holds shares without intent to influence the company, with more relaxed disclosure requirements and timing. Investors intending to interfere with the company's operations would use a 13D form for such disclosures. According to U.S. securities law, after the acquisition, NVIDIA is prohibited from engaging in reverse transactions within six months. Of course, for NVIDIA, with a market cap close to $3 trillion and a plethora of orders, stock trading is not a priority.
Serve Robotics is a robotics company spun off from Uber in 2021, primarily providing last-mile delivery robots for Uber's food delivery platform. Consequently, Uber is not only Serve Robotics' largest single shareholder (holding nearly 14%) but also its largest customer. According to documents released at the shareholder meeting in May, besides Uber and NVIDIA, early investors in the company include 7-11 convenience stores and German food delivery platform Delivery Hero.
The company disclosed plans to deploy 2,000 delivery robots in Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, and Vancouver by 2025.
Through collaboration with Serve Robotics, Uber and NVIDIA are also testing the feasibility of large-scale commercial automated delivery robots. Subsequently, Uber has also partnered with autonomous driving car companies like Waymo and Motional to provide food delivery services.
Serve Robotics' sidewalk delivery robots possess "L4" autonomy, a standard originally set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) for autonomous vehicles. Reaching L4 level means the vehicle can achieve fully autonomous driving under specific conditions or restricted areas without human intervention.
The company also mentioned that in real-life scenarios, the robots might encounter some edge cases—such as police cordons or road construction—where they would stop and request intervention from remote supervisors. Of course, with NVIDIA's complete AI system backing them, the robots can also re-plan routes when they encounter obstacles.
By the way, although Serve Robotics is a delivery robot company, it also revealed that these adorable robots roaming the sidewalks are very popular with advertisers. The company's CEO, Ali Kashani, once remarked to the media, Who would have thought I started a robotics company and then got into the advertising business?