Kiwibot: a campus delivery robot from Berkeley that became Robot.com

Kiwibot is a small sidewalk robot that delivers food on university campuses. It started at UC Berkeley in 2017, spread to more campuses with Sodexo, and in 2025 the company renamed itself Robot.com.

MakerKiwibot (first called Kiwi). Founded in Berkeley in 2017 by Colombian-born Felipe Chávez. Headquarters later in Miami, now San Francisco. Renamed Robot.com in May 2025

StartUC Berkeley, 2017. $3.80 per delivery in 2018

FormA small four-wheeled sidewalk robot. In 2018 it carried up to five meals. The current R-Kiwi has six cameras, 3D lidar and a 10–12 hour battery

SettingUniversity campuses and city sidewalks. Food delivery and advertising on the robot’s body

ReachAbout 200 robots, 10 campuses and over 200,000 deliveries in February 2022. In 2026, over 500 R-Kiwi robots and 2.4 million tasks

NowSeven-year agreement with Sodexo in 2026. R-Kiwi robots operate on Sodexo campuses

Ended byNot applicable

See the robotThe Robot Report, Robot.com R-Kiwi (2026) ↗

Operating as Robot.com; campus deliveries

Timeline

2017Berkeley startFounded at UC Berkeley
2018.0510,000th meal
2022.02Sodexo deal$20M contract
2025.05Robot.comRenamed
2026In operation7-year Sodexo deal, 500+ robots

Why a Colombian founder chose Berkeley

Kiwibot is a delivery robot that travels on sidewalks. Colombian-born Felipe Chávez moved to Berkeley and founded the company, Kiwi, in 2017. “For me it is the best place to start a food delivery company,” he told Berkeley News. The small four-wheeled robots ran along campus paths carrying up to five meals. In 2018 a delivery cost $3.80, and in May that year the company delivered its 10,000th meal.

A fire, Sodexo, and billboards

In December 2018 an idle robot caught fire on the Berkeley campus. A defective battery had been fitted during a swap, a human error, and the company paused its robots for a time. In February 2022 the company raised $7.5 million and signed a $20 million deal with Sodexo. It then had about 200 robots on 10 campuses and had made over 200,000 deliveries, and it aimed for 1,200 robots on 50 campuses by the end of the year. In 2024 it bought a Taipei chipmaker, citing US–China tensions, and acquired the ad start-up Nickelytics for $25 million to turn its robots into mobile billboards. In May 2025 the company renamed itself Robot.com. In 2026 it signed a seven-year agreement with Sodexo, building on a partnership that began in 2021. By then more than 500 R-Kiwi robots had been deployed and had completed 2.4 million tasks.

“Seven-year contracts don’t come right away”

In September 2025 UBC ran a four-week pilot with three Kiwibots on its Vancouver campus. Andrew Parr of UBC student housing and community services called the campus bookstore a perfect laboratory for the work. In 2022 the chair of Sodexo North America said Kiwibot helps Sodexo meet clients and consumers where they are. Speaking about the 2026 deal, Chávez said: “Seven-year contracts don't come right away.” He described it as a learning process for both companies.

Delivery robots that double as billboards

Kiwibot invites comparison with Starship, another campus delivery robot. Starship wound down its US campus business in 2026, while Kiwibot stayed on campuses through its long-term contract with Sodexo. The company also turned its robots into billboards to earn money beyond delivery fees. It contrasts, too, with Amazon’s Scout, which Amazon shut down.

What other uses does a sidewalk ask of a delivery robot’s body?

What we haven’t confirmed

How long the robots were paused after the 2018 fire
Exact robot counts by year (reports say 400 in 2021 and about 200 in 2022)
How much remote operators intervene in the robots’ driving
Whether the delivery business is profitable