Robot.com
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| Robot.com | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Legal name | Kiwi Campus, Inc., dba Robot.com |
| Former name | Kiwibot / Kiwi Campus |
| Founded | 2017 (as Kiwi Campus / Kiwibot) |
| Rebrand announced | May 8, 2025 |
| Official launch | October 29, 2025 |
| Founders | Felipe Chavez (CEO), Jason Oviedo (CTO), Sergio Pachon (COO) |
| Incorporated | Delaware, United States |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Additional offices | Medellin, Colombia; Taiwan |
| Industry | Robotics, Logistics, Advertising |
| Products | R-Noid, R-Top, R-Cargo, R-Dog, R-Kiwi |
| Philosophy | "Robots for now, not someday" |
| Website | robot.com |
Robot.com (legally Kiwi Campus, Inc.) is an American robotics company that develops and operates autonomous mobile robots, humanoid robots, and quadruped platforms for last-mile delivery, warehouse logistics, advertising, and service automation. The company was originally founded in 2017 as Kiwi Campus (commonly known as Kiwibot), a sidewalk delivery robot startup that began at the University of California, Berkeley, founded by Colombian entrepreneur Felipe Chavez along with co-founders Jason Oviedo and Sergio Pachon. The rebrand to Robot.com was announced on May 8, 2025, after Chavez disclosed the acquisition of the robot.com domain, and the company officially launched under its new identity on October 29, 2025, reporting more than 1.7 million completed real-world tasks across deployments in the United States, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.[1][2][3]
Robot.com positions itself around the slogan "robots for now, not someday," emphasizing practical, deployable robotic systems over future prototypes. Its product family includes the R-Kiwi sidewalk delivery robot (the original Kiwibot platform), the R-Cargo industrial autonomous warehouse robot, the R-Dog quadruped advertising robot, the R-Top stationary humanoid for fixed-station tasks, and the R-Noid mobile humanoid robot for factory and warehouse environments.[4][5][6][7][8]
Felipe Chavez began his entrepreneurial career in Bogota, Colombia, where he started a courier delivery service called Lulo (later acquired by Latin American grocery unicorn Merqueo) and a related student delivery operation called Kiwi in 2015. The original Kiwi service used human couriers in Bogota, but Chavez became convinced that the high cost of last-mile delivery, sometimes equal to the food price itself, demanded an automated solution. He brought the idea to California in January 2017 as part of UC Berkeley's LAUNCH accelerator and pivoted from human couriers to autonomous robots.[3][9]
In 2016 and 2017, Chavez formally co-founded Kiwi Campus, Inc. with Jason Oviedo (Chief Technology Officer) and Sergio Pachon (Chief Operating Officer). The company joined Berkeley's SkyDeck startup incubator, which would later return as one of Robot.com's institutional investors through the SkyDeck Fund. In March 2017, the first prototype Kiwibots rolled out on the Berkeley campus, and by May 2017 around 20 robots were operating on campus and in surrounding parts of the city.[3][9]
The Kiwibot platform consisted of small four-wheeled sidewalk robots roughly the size of a cooler, designed to handle the final stretch of food delivery. Early operations relied on a hybrid model in which human supervisors based in Medellin, Colombia, monitored the robots remotely and intervened at intersections or in unusual situations. By May 2018, Kiwibot had completed more than 10,000 deliveries on Berkeley's campus.[9]
In December 2018, a Kiwibot caught fire near Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union when its battery experienced thermal runaway. The robot was idling at the time, and a passerby used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. No one was injured. The incident drew international media attention, and students at Berkeley held a candlelight vigil for the destroyed robot. Kiwi Campus attributed the malfunction to a defective battery that had been manually inserted, paused operations to investigate, and committed to new battery monitoring software before resuming service.[10]
In 2019 and 2020, Kiwibot began expanding outside of Berkeley, announcing a pilot in Sacramento in August 2019 and beginning operations in San Jose in July 2020. More importantly, the company shifted its strategy from a direct-to-consumer delivery app to a business-to-business robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model in which campus food service operators paid for robotic delivery as part of their dining contracts.[9]
The key partnership in this pivot was with Sodexo, the French food services and facilities management group. Kiwibot and Sodexo announced an initial collaboration in 2021 to deploy delivery robots at three U.S. universities. On February 15, 2022, Kiwibot announced a Pre-Series A funding round of approximately $7.5 million, bringing total capital raised to $14 million. Headline and SolGlobal led the round, with Sodexo participating as a strategic investor through Sodexo Ventures. As part of the same announcement, Sodexo committed to deploying 1,200 Kiwibots across 50 U.S. college campuses by the end of 2022. Sodexo Chair of North America Sarosh Mistry said in the announcement that "the early success of our Kiwibot partnership has shown that automated delivery is not only possible and reliable, it's desirable."[11][12]
By 2024, Kiwibot reported deliveries at more than 30 universities across the United States.[9]
In April 2024, Kiwibot acquired AUTO Mobility Solutions, a Taiwan-based company specializing in AI-driven self-driving systems and security chip development. AUTO held a portfolio of more than 100 patents related to AI, IoT, and cybersecurity. The acquisition gave Kiwibot in-house silicon-level cybersecurity capability for its robots and shifted a portion of its production supply chain from mainland China to Taiwan. Industry trade press described the deal as an unusual semiconductor-focused move for a robotics startup.[13]
In September 2024, Kiwibot announced a $25 million acquisition of Nickelytics, a Florida-based mobile and outdoor advertising technology firm. Nickelytics operated a network of approximately 800,000 advertising units and provided a proprietary ad attribution and measurement platform. The combined entity could turn delivery robots into mobile advertising platforms with measurable return on ad spend, and the merged company projected approximately $8 million in 2024 revenue with clients including Amazon Web Services, Coinbase, and Salesforce. Nickelytics co-founder Judah Longgrear continued as Head of North America for the combined business, while Eduardo Iniguez, who joined through the Nickelytics acquisition, became Chief Financial Officer of Robot.com.[14][15]
On May 8, 2025, Felipe Chavez publicly disclosed on social media that the company had acquired the robot.com domain and would rebrand from Kiwibot to Robot.com. In an accompanying press release, the company reported that it had taken seven years to complete its first 300,000 robotic tasks but had completed an additional 1 million tasks in the seven months that followed, representing approximately 400 percent task growth in that period. The release described more than 500 robots in active deployment, operations in more than half of U.S. states, and pilots and showcases in San Francisco, Paris, Seoul, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai.[1][16]
Chavez summarized the rebrand with the line, "Robots aren't coming. They're here. And we're giving them work to do."[1] The company also strengthened its leadership team, appointing former Uber business development executive J. Kim Fennell as Chief Business Officer and confirming Iniguez as CFO.[15]
The official Robot.com launch followed on October 29, 2025, with a Business Wire announcement that the company had completed more than 1.7 million real-world tasks and was now serving Fortune 500 customers across the United States, Canada, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Customers cited in the launch included Sodexo for campus food delivery, Amazon Web Services for a global advertising campaign, the Canadian food delivery service SKIP, and an unnamed Fortune 500 semiconductor manufacturer using the company's robots for secure parts movement. Chavez summarized the company's positioning as: "For years, robotics has been about what might be possible. We're focused on what's already working."[2][16]
Robot.com markets a coordinated family of five robot types, all of which it operates as a service through its RobotOS platform.[4][5][6][7][8]
| Product | Type | Application |
|---|---|---|
| R-Kiwi | Sidewalk delivery robot | Last-mile food and package delivery on campuses and city sidewalks |
| R-Cargo | Industrial autonomous robot | Indoor/outdoor warehouse logistics, pallet and parts movement |
| R-Dog | Quadruped advertising robot | Interactive brand activations, inspection, patrol |
| R-Top | Stationary humanoid | Precision station work, kitchen support, semiconductor handling |
| R-Noid | Mobile humanoid | Factory floor and warehouse general-purpose tasks |
R-Kiwi is the direct descendant of the original Kiwibot delivery platform. It is a small, four-wheeled sidewalk robot designed for last-mile delivery of meals, packages, and other small goods on college campuses and in urban environments. According to Robot.com's product page, more than 500 R-Kiwi units have completed approximately 2.4 million tasks across campuses and city sidewalks. The robot uses a sensor stack consisting of NVIDIA-powered superwide-angle 3D LiDAR and six high-definition cameras for navigation, with 10 to 12 hours of battery life and an optional wireless charging system. Robot.com markets R-Kiwi for operation in rain, snow, and heat, and emphasizes that the robot is "built for sidewalks, not labs."[8]
R-Cargo is an industrial autonomous robot designed to move boxes, parts, and semiconductor wafers in hybrid indoor and outdoor environments. The vehicle is rated for Level 4 autonomy in warehouse settings, navigates around forklifts, pallets, and people, and runs for approximately 8 hours on a single charge. R-Cargo uses NVIDIA computing for perception and planning, supports both self-charging stations and wireless charging, and includes compliant industrial cargo area lighting. Robot.com markets R-Cargo for warehouses and outdoor lots that connect logistics operations.[6]
R-Dog is a quadruped robot positioned primarily as an interactive advertising platform for brand campaigns in public spaces. It carries dual high-resolution displays, two HD cameras for navigation, and 3D LiDAR sensors. The robot includes interactive responses such as a sensor that triggers a tail-wagging animation when its head is petted, and Robot.com reports that R-Dog has appeared in campaigns on five continents. Beyond advertising, R-Dog can be configured for inspection and patrol use cases.[5]
R-Top is a stationary humanoid designed for precision tasks at fixed work stations rather than for mobile roaming. The robot has dual six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) arms with a payload of approximately 9 pounds (about 4 kilograms) per arm. Robot.com markets R-Top for package handling, kitchen support, and repetitive physical work in logistics and service environments, and the unit is integrated with the company's RobotOS platform for multi-robot coordination.[7]
R-Noid is Robot.com's mobile humanoid robot for factory floors and warehouses, working alongside human staff to handle repetitive bimanual tasks. Its key published specifications are listed below.[4][17]
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Arms | Dual 7-DOF arms |
| Payload per arm | 11 lbs (5 kg) |
| Torso | 4-DOF articulated |
| Display | Dual-screen expressive face |
| Autonomy | Generative Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models |
| Charging | Autonomous docking and charging |
R-Noid uses Robot.com's proprietary AI stack, including Vision-Language-Action models, to interpret natural-language commands and adapt to unpredictable environments. The third-party logistics company GXO has deployed Robot.com humanoids in live warehouse operations to move semiconductor wafers, boxes, and parts safely alongside human workers, and the company describes related Fortune 500 deployments in advanced manufacturing.[2][4]
Robot.com's stack combines several layers of hardware and software developed in-house and through acquisitions:
As of the October 2025 launch, Robot.com reported more than 1.7 million completed real-world tasks and a deployed fleet of more than 500 robots, growing from a base of approximately 300,000 cumulative tasks before the company's late-2024 expansion phase. Operations span the United States, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, with showcase events in San Francisco, Paris, Seoul, Berlin, and Sao Paulo.[1][2]
Major disclosed customers and deployment categories include:
Kiwi Campus, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware and operates as Robot.com. Public reporting indicates the following funding history and corporate transactions:
Disclosed institutional investors and capital partners listed in the October 2025 launch press release include Headline, the UC Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, Sodexo Ventures, New Future Capital, the Innosphere Ventures Fund, and Tylt Ventures.[2]
The Robot.com leadership team named in public sources as of late 2025 includes:
Robot.com's rebrand and launch were covered by trade publications including Yahoo Finance, Business Wire, the Retail Technology Innovation Hub, OttomateNews, and Robotics and Automation News. Coverage emphasized the unusual combination of a sidewalk delivery startup re-positioning itself as a multi-platform automation company, the symbolic value of acquiring the robot.com domain, and the company's pragmatic "already working" message in a market crowded with research-stage humanoid robotics demonstrations.[1][2][16]
The company's December 2018 fire incident remains one of the most-cited public incidents in autonomous sidewalk robotics, and Kiwibot's response, including a public investigation and updated battery monitoring, is sometimes referenced in discussions of safety standards for last-mile delivery robots. The 2024 acquisition of AUTO Mobility Solutions has been highlighted by Asian trade press as one of the few examples of a small Western robotics startup vertically integrating into Taiwanese semiconductor capability.[10][13]