Why Serve Robotics Stock Soared Today

Shares of Serve Robotics (NASDAQ: SERV), which makes autonomous food delivery robots for delivering takeout, surged an astounding 24.5% through 10:10 a.m. ET Thursday. And why?

Serve just announced a surprise partnership with food delivery giant DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH).

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Serve and DoorDash: Better together

Serve Robotics began life as a Postmates project before being acquired by Uber, along with Postmates, in 2020. In 2021, Uber spun it off, and now Serve's teaming up with one of Uber's archrivals.

That probably came as a surprise.

As DoorDash and Serve explain today, they've signed a "multi-year strategic partnership to roll out autonomous robot deliveries across the U.S." Serve CEO Ali Kashani noted the partnership "allows us to serve more customers." This may explain why Serve has been so busy building robots lately, passing 1,000 delivery robots in service earlier this week, and aiming to hit 2,000 by year-end.

Is Serve Robotics stock a buy?

That's about it for the details we know about this partnership though. No word on how revenue will be shared, whether Serve will sell robots to DoorDash or just provide services, or how much a DoorDash partnership might be worth to Serve in terms of revenue and profit.

What we do know is that Serve Robotics still has a long way to go to reach profitability. Serve lost $39 million last year, and is on track to lose perhaps $68 million through the end of this year. Revenue was less than $2 million in 2024, and while analysts want to see Serve double revenue to nearly $4 million this year, that's obviously not going to be enough to turn $68 million in losses into a profit.

Serve remains a speculative, momentum-driven stock -- even with DoorDash as a partner.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends DoorDash, Serve Robotics, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.