#autonomous-delivery

#autonomous-delivery

I live in a country where deliveries, whether they're goods or food, are pretty common. You see a ton of motorcycles on the road and most of them are either ride-sharing or door-to-door delivery. It of course adds to the traffic congestion in an already notoriously congested city. But if you live in a place where that is not a problem, you probably are looking forward to the day when automated delivery will be a part of the normal, every day life.

Your 2am Ben & Jerry's might soon be delivered by what looks like the love child of Wall-E and Lightning McQueen. This week, DoorDash unveiled an intentionally adorable delivery robot named Dot, which it's piloting in the Phoenix area, with plans for a wide rollout in the metro area by the year's end. The anthropomorphic food box on wheels is DoorDash's first foray into ground-based autonomous delivery-a frontier many companies have struggled to conquer due to the challenge of navigating chaotic streets without angering pedestrians.

The tech company leased a warehouse in the Mission District last month that will serve as a research and development space to advance its autonomous delivery technology, a June letter sent to San Francisco Zoning Administrator Corey Teague shows. "This project reflects a broader commitment to reinvesting in San Francisco's innovation economy and creating pathways for local employment in emerging technologies," the letter said. The 34,325-square-foot building at 1960 Folsom St. is roughly two miles away from DoorDash's headquarters. About 200 people are expected to be employed at the site.

That's what we found when we met Wolt in 2021-a team with very shared values, which to me is probably the hardest thing to get right in M&A,