Coco Robotics Unveils Next-Gen Delivery Robots
Coco Robotics has launched its next-generation autonomous robots for urban delivery. The new units feature upgraded perception and navigation systems designed to handle complex city environments and coordinate with other agents in real-time. The launch targets the growing market for last-mile logistics automation.
Founded in 2020 by UCLA alumni Zach Rash and Brad Squicciarini, Coco Robotics originated in a college dorm room with the goal of solving last-mile urban logistics. The company has since raised over $120 million, with a significant $80 million Series B in June 2025 backed by investors including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Pelion Venture Partners, and former Uber SVP Ryan Graves. The next-generation "Coco 2" platform marks a strategic shift from remote human piloting to full autonomy. Its AI is trained on millions of miles of real-world data and leverages NVIDIA's simulation platforms, including Omniverse and Isaac Sim, to practice navigating complex urban scenarios with synthetic data before deployment. Onboard processing is handled by the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX platform, enabling high-performance edge computing without total reliance on the cloud. This new hardware is designed for increased operational range, capable of using bike lanes and permitted roads to travel up to 15 mph, potentially cutting delivery times by 50% compared to the previous sidewalk-only models. The robots feature upgraded cameras and front-facing LiDAR for 360-degree perception and are built to be more resilient, with improved weatherproofing that makes them fully submersible and compatible with snow tires. Coco Robotics has also established key strategic partnerships to scale its operations. The company has a research collaboration with OpenAI to utilize its vast dataset of urban robot interactions and appointed UCLA professor Bolei Zhou as Chief AI Scientist to lead an in-house physical AI lab. A partnership with RoboSense will integrate the latter's LiDAR solutions to enhance the robots' perception capabilities. The company operates a B2B2C model, integrating its fleet with major delivery platforms like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Wolt, serving over 3,000 merchant locations. This strategy places it in a competitive landscape alongside players like Starship Technologies, which has completed over 8 million deliveries, and the publicly-traded Serve Robotics, which has a deal to deploy up to 2,000 robots on the Uber Eats platform. The broader autonomous last-mile delivery market is projected for significant expansion, with some analyses forecasting a compound annual growth rate of over 23% through 2035. North America currently represents the largest market share for these technologies, driven by e-commerce demand and advancements in robotics.
