Serve Robotics Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Serve Robotics reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of about $3 million, up sharply year over year, and reiterated its $26 million full-year revenue guidance along with a non-GAAP operating expense outlook of $160 million to $170 million.
• Growth was driven by fleet revenue and a rising software/recurring revenue mix, with nearly one-third of quarterly revenue coming from software and just under half of total revenue now recurring.
• Management said the company is shifting focus from fleet expansion to utilization, monetization and operating leverage, while warning that Q2 growth should slow as it prepares for stronger second-half growth and continues expanding into healthcare through Diligent Robotics.

Serve Robotics NASDAQ: SERV reported sharply higher first-quarter 2026 revenue and reiterated its full-year outlook, as management said the company is shifting from building out its robot fleet toward improving utilization, revenue per robot and operating leverage across food delivery and healthcare automation.

Co-founder and CEO Ali Kashani said first-quarter revenue was “nearly $3 million,” above the company’s expectations and up nearly sevenfold from the year-ago period. CFO Brian Read later said total revenue was approximately $3 million, up 238% sequentially and about 578% year over year. On a pro forma basis, including Diligent Robotics, which Serve acquired at the start of the year, revenue rose approximately 28% sequentially and 30% year over year.

Management reiterated its 2026 revenue guidance of $26 million and maintained its non-GAAP operating expense outlook of $160 million to $170 million for the year.

Fleet Revenue Leads Growth as Software Adds Recurring Mix

Kashani said Serve’s fleet revenue grew from about $200,000 in the first quarter of last year to nearly $2 million this quarter. Read said fleet revenue was approximately $2 million, while software revenue was approximately $1 million.

About one-third of total revenue in the quarter came from software services, Kashani said, and just under half of total revenue is now recurring. Read said the quarter included approximately $1.4 million of recurring revenue, with the remainder coming from usage-based, project-based and other non-recurring sources.

Read said Serve is now monetizing through several revenue streams, including fleet, software, branding, data and healthcare automation. He described food delivery as the primary growth engine, but said the broader revenue base gives the company “more ways to monetize the same underlying autonomy stack.”

Robot Activity Expands, but Q2 Growth Expected to Slow

Kashani said Serve’s deployed fleet is now seven times larger than it was in the first quarter of last year, while daily active robots are up 10 times and daily supply hours are up 13 times over the same period. He said Moxie and Serve robots together now provide more than 10,000 robot supply hours per day to partners, with more than 800 robots active daily.

Read said daily active robots averaged 812 in the quarter, up about 48% sequentially, and daily supply hours averaged more than 10,000, up about 54% sequentially.

However, Kashani cautioned that investors should not expect every quarter to show the same growth rate. He said Serve expects slower growth in the second quarter while it works on geographic coverage, partnerships and capabilities ahead of expected growth in the second half of the year.

Kashani said the company is not deploying additional sidewalk robots in the first half beyond the 2,000 already in the fleet. Instead, Serve is focused on operational growth and efficiency, including getting the full delivery fleet running daily, improving utilization, activating more merchants, integrating more delivery platforms and expanding into new cities and neighborhoods.

Diligent Robotics Adds Healthcare Exposure

The first quarter was the first period in which Diligent Robotics was reflected in Serve’s results. Kashani said the healthcare business is performing in line with the plan outlined when the acquisition was announced, adding that the hospital pipeline for new business is healthy.

Serve’s combined sidewalk and healthcare operations now span 44 cities in 14 states and have completed nearly 2 million deliveries across those domains, Kashani said. He said the expansion came from new autonomous delivery markets, hospital networks added through Diligent and continued growth in existing markets.

In response to an analyst question about the hospital segment, Kashani said Serve tracks explicit performance indicators around how much robots help hospital staff and seeks to increase the number of tasks and deliveries completed. He said one way to maximize revenue is to increase fleet size in hospitals as robots become more productive.

Read added that increasing fleet size in the Diligent business is an opportunity for the rest of 2026 and could support top-line growth.

Losses Remain Elevated as Company Invests in Autonomy

Serve continued to report significant losses while investing in robotics and autonomy development. Read said gross margin was negative 302%, though he noted it improved materially from the fourth quarter as revenue scaled and software revenue contributed positive gross margins.

Read said fleet gross margin remained negative as the company supported a larger fleet, integrated its healthcare fleet and built the operating structure for a multi-domain robotics platform. He said improving margins will depend on more revenue per robot and operating hour, better operational productivity and a greater mix of recurring software and platform revenue.

GAAP operating expenses were $42.8 million in the quarter. Excluding stock-based compensation of $7.4 million and amortization and acquisition-related expense of $3.6 million, non-GAAP operating expenses were approximately $31.8 million.

Read said research and development remained the company’s largest investment area, with GAAP R&D expense of $19 million, or approximately $15.5 million excluding stock-based compensation. GAAP net loss was $49 million, or 65 cents per share, while non-GAAP net loss was $38 million, or 50 cents per share.

Net cash used in operating activities was $41.4 million, while investing cash outflows were $19.6 million, driven primarily by acquisition activity. Capital expenditures were approximately $1.4 million. Serve ended the quarter with $197.4 million in cash and marketable securities.

Management Discusses Expansion, Regulation and DoorDash

During the question-and-answer session, Kashani said Serve has not seen demand as a limiting factor, describing last-mile movement of goods as an expensive market with broad opportunity. He said scaling depends on policy, societal acceptance, robot deployment, operations and integrations with services consumers use.

On market expansion, Kashani said Serve is evaluating both existing-city growth and new markets, including international opportunities. He cited Vancouver, Canada, where he said the city approved a motion to enable a robot deployment pilot, though he added that it is not yet a completed agreement and still requires work with the city and province.

Kashani said regulation plays a major role in choosing markets. He said Serve looks for places that are receptive, have or are willing to develop an operating framework, and have demand through partners and platforms.

Asked about DoorDash, Kashani said Serve has made “a lot of great progress,” adding that delivery volume with DoorDash has been growing faster than with other partners and that merchant count has increased about sixfold since the beginning of the year.

Kashani also emphasized safety, saying Serve’s robots collectively travel a distance greater than walking from New York to Los Angeles during operating hours each day and that the company has not had an incident resulting in serious injury or anything approaching one.

About Serve Robotics NASDAQ: SERV

Serve Robotics develops and operates autonomous sidewalk delivery robots designed to transform last-mile logistics for restaurants, retailers and grocery brands. By combining proprietary hardware, sensor suites and dispatch software, the company enables on-demand deliveries of food, beverages and consumer goods while minimizing reliance on traditional vehicle fleets.

The core Serve robot integrates four-wheeled mobility, LiDAR and vision cameras with AI-driven navigation algorithms to detect obstacles, traverse urban sidewalks and interact safely with pedestrians.

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