Nvidia and Uber-backed sidewalk delivery robot company Serve Robotics is expanding into a new category: healthcare with its latest acquisition.
Los Angeles-based Saab Robotics announced Tuesday that it will acquire Diligent Robotics, a startup that develops a robot named Moxi that is designed to assist hospitals by providing lab samples, supplies and other tasks. The transaction values Diligent’s common stock at $29 million.
Founded in 2017 by Andrea Thomasz and Vivian Chu, Diligent Robotics has raised over $75 million in venture capital to date, most recently closing a $25 million funding round in 2023.
The acquisition marks Saab’s first foray beyond its food delivery roots. The sidewalk delivery robot company was founded in 2017 within food delivery company Postmates. The project continued after Uber acquired Postmates and spun it off in 2021. Saab went public in April 2024 through a reverse merger.
Ali Kashani, Serve’s co-founder and CEO, doesn’t think the acquisition will be a major departure from the company’s original goals.
Although the company hasn’t focused specifically on healthcare, the way Diligent’s robot Moxi operates fits squarely with the company’s theme of last-mile delivery and robots that can travel alongside humans, Kashani told TechCrunch in a recent interview.
“This is kind of a classic example of a prepared mind meeting opportunity,” Kashani said. “Robots moving among people is a broader opportunity for us. If we can solve the problem of how to move robots seamlessly between people as autonomous machines, we can bring that into many other environments. We’ve always wanted to do this someday.”
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Kashani said healthcare was also not a specific goal of expansion, but rather that the two companies came together at the perfect time. Diligent was looking to scale, and Serve was opportunistically looking into new areas.
“We love this team. They have very similar DNA to us, which means they don’t build in the lab, they build in real life,” Kashani said. “It seems like it really aligns with our mission.”
Kashani said Diligent will continue to operate relatively independently within Saab. Diligent will leverage Saab’s software and tools to support its scale-up efforts, and the two companies will share technology and collaborate, he added.
Kashani added that this is not the cornerstone of the company, nor does it mean Saab is looking to acquire more startups. Kashani emphasized that Saab remains focused on sidewalk delivery robots and said the company will “continue to keep an eye out” for interesting companies as potential partners, not necessarily acquisition targets.
Serve was able to increase its robot fleet from 100 to more than 2,000 in 2025, he said. The company also partnered with DoorDash in October to facilitate some deliveries in Los Angeles.
“Our sidewalk business is the driving force behind everything,” Kashani said. “We’re creating technology, which is currently one of the largest autonomous vehicles in the world, and will help us create everything we need in other applications.”
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