Serve Robotics Q3 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Revenue more than quadrupled year over year to $2.8 million in Q3, prompting Serve Robotics to raise its 2026 revenue outlook to $12 million. The company nevertheless reported a $7.6 million gross loss and a $59.2 million net loss.
• Serve said delivery growth through DoorDash and Grubhub helped drive expansion, while cost reductions improved fleet margin by more than 100 percentage points quarter over quarter. Robots were 13% faster, and delivery completion remained 99.9%.
• The company is expanding into Australia and developing new robotics services for other industries, while continuing to invest in its hospital robot business. It ended the quarter with more than $198 million in cash and marketable securities and expects 2026 operating expenses of about $150 million.

Serve Robotics NASDAQ: SERV raised its full-year revenue outlook after third-quarter sales more than quadrupled from a year earlier, as the company expanded delivery partnerships, cut fleet operating costs and introduced services for other robotics businesses.

The company reported third-quarter revenue of $2.8 million, up from roughly $700,000 a year earlier. It raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $12 million from a range of $9 million to $10 million, implying fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $3 million, Chief Financial Officer Brian Read said.

Despite the growth, Serve reported a gross loss of $7.6 million and a gross margin of negative 266%. Its net loss was $59.2 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a non-GAAP net loss of $44.6 million, or 51 cents per share.

Delivery Growth and Cost Cuts

Co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani said daily deliveries through newer partners DoorDash and Grubhub more than tripled from the end of the second quarter to the end of the third. Their share of Serve’s total deliveries more than doubled, while the number of merchants on those platforms grew more than 2.5 times, he said.

Fleet services revenue rose about $300,000 from the prior quarter, even as Uber volume declined, Read said. Software services revenue fell after a customer contract concluded in the second quarter. He said software revenue could remain volatile from quarter to quarter.

Asked about Uber, Kashani said the relationship continues and that the existing contract runs through part of the first quarter of next year, to his understanding. The company will continue to evaluate the relationship, he said.

Serve’s fleet margin improved by more than 100 percentage points from the second quarter, while total cost of revenue fell 14%, Read said. He attributed the improvement to lower remote operations costs per delivery, nearly $1 million in procurement, repair and maintenance savings, and a deployment redesign that reduced daily external deployment costs by 75%.

Kashani said Serve’s robots were 13% faster than in the second quarter and traveled 7% more miles per delivery. The delivery completion rate was 99.9%, unchanged from the prior quarter.

New Markets and Robot Services

Serve recently launched in Gold Coast, Australia, its first international market, through an exclusive partnership with DoorDash. Griffith University hosts the company’s local operations team. Kashani said Serve is also working with the province on a potential launch in Vancouver, after the city council approved a pilot proposal earlier this year.

The company is investing in small “micro depots” for charging, staging and maintaining robots. In early deployments, Serve expects to launch cities at one-fifth the cost and in a fraction of the time required by its legacy deployment format, Kashani said.

Serve also announced Serve Physical AI Services, an offering for other robotics companies that initially includes fleet connectivity, real-world data for foundation models and data-curation infrastructure. Construction robotics company Bedrock Robotics is among the launch customers for Serve Link, the connectivity service.

Kashani said customer and prospective customer interest spans industries including construction, mining and defense. Serve Link generally generates recurring revenue per device or seat, he said, without providing a specific gross margin. Read said the new services require no additional robot builds and do not compete with delivery or healthcare operations for fleet capacity.

Healthcare and Financial Outlook

Serve’s fleet includes 2,000 robots across 40 cities and 27 hospitals, Kashani said. Its Moxi hospital robots move supplies and materials, and the company has signed multiyear extensions with 12 existing hospital clients this year. Two of those clients expanded their robot fleets.

Kashani described 2026 as an investment year for Moxi following its acquisition and said Serve is rolling out Moxi 2.0 hardware. The company hopes to upgrade existing client fleets and place the new robots in additional hospitals.

Serve ended the quarter with more than $198 million in cash and marketable securities. It expects approximately $150 million in full-year non-GAAP operating expenses, $20 million below its expectation at the start of the year, and maintained its capital spending outlook of $15 million to $17 million.

Read said the company would continue to focus on spending discipline into 2027 while investing in autonomy and software. Non-GAAP operating expenses declined to $39.2 million in the third quarter, down $1.2 million sequentially and marking their first quarterly decline this year.

About Serve Robotics (NASDAQ:SERV)

Serve Robotics develops and operates autonomous, electric sidewalk delivery robots designed to transport goods over short distances. Its robots use cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence and remote human assistance to navigate sidewalks, cross streets and interact with customers while delivering items such as restaurant meals, groceries and other local orders.

The company's services are primarily aimed at on-demand delivery platforms, restaurants and retailers. Serve has deployed its robots for commercial deliveries in the United States, including the Los Angeles area, and has worked with partners such as Uber Eats to support local delivery operations.

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