Ali Kashani, Serve Robotics | CES 2026

>> Greetings nerd fam and welcome back to our special exclusive coverage here in Las Vegas, Nevada at CES 2026, the biggest technology show in North America.

My name's Savannah Peterson.

Really excited to have my friend and the CEO of Serve Robotics, Ali, on the show today.

Thank you so much for squeezing us in this week.

>> Yeah, of course. It's a pleasure.

>> You have been on such a tear since I saw you.

It's only been I think 90 days since we last spoke.

And I feel like that's been an entire lifetime, not only in the world, but also at Serve.

Give us some of the latest numbers.

I know you just hit a big milestone.

>> Yeah, I think we doubled our fleet in those 90 days.

>> You literally hit? - Yeah, yeah.

>> Went from 1,000 to 2,000? - To 2,000, that's right.

>> In a quarter? - Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was coming up.

I couldn't talk about it at the time, but we were telling everybody that was our goal to have 2, 000 robots by the end of the year.

We started the year with 100 robots out of each half there being used for research, the other half for operation.

Also, really 50 robots and the end of the year with 2,000 robots.

So that was quite a year.

>> Okay. That's huge. We're talking about orders of magnitude.

These are also large pieces of physical hardware with quite a bit of intelligence in them.

How were you able to scale that fast?

>> Yeah. Well, they say, what is it?

Overnight success, years in the making?

>> Yeah, 10 years in the making.

>> Really what it was. So about nine years, I think actually from 2017 to now, where we've been working on the technology, getting it ready to be in a stage where it can be scaled.

So the hardware had been iterated, this is generation I don't know what.

There's so many versions at this point.

The software obviously.

And we've been operating since 2019 in Los Angeles in a real commercial way, in real neighborhoods with real restaurants, hundreds of them.

So going from there to here, there was a lot of background work that had prepared us for this kind of big push.

>> Yeah. And to your point, you had had that R&D, you had all those data points from users interacting with them.

You've also rolled out into new cities, which is a complex challenge, both with regulation.

I'm sure there's a political and cultural aspect to that.

So you've got Alexandria and Fort Lauderdale, I believe, since the last time we spoke.

What's the reception like then in those cities?

>> I think the last email I got from someone in the members of the public was someone telling me their daughter is so obsessed with the robots if we have toy versions to give them.

And thankfully we had some.

>> People are begging for Serve swag.

>> Yeah. - I'm not even surprised. Oh my God, I love that.

>> It's fun. They're so cute. They're fun. Of course, look, there are always hesitations and people who feel more reluctant, but we try to engage, we try to design the robots in a friendly way so that hopefully a lot of the reactions are the positive kind.

>> Yeah. I think that's such a good example.

I'm just thinking about how you could Easter egg little seasonal or commemorative.

Maybe for the 3,000th robot, you could have a special little mini plush high in that- >> We have Lego kits now.

Yeah. Which is we can't make enough of these.

They just go like hotcakes. Yeah.

>> What a fun. I hadn't even thought about the extended product line beyond obviously the extremely ...

>> Maybe the Slack shop. Yeah.

>> It must be kind of nice to design swag.

It's a little less stakes than when you're designing the robots.

So what are some of the challenges that you're hoping to face this year? Yeah, let's start with that.

>> Hoping to face. Wow.

It's a really interesting kind of problem to solve, which is you're going to the real world.

These are real neighborhoods.

Every month we are going to new neighborhoods basically.

And meeting with people who have never seen the robot before, they didn't sign up for this.

They didn't decide that today they're going to see a robot walk next to them.

So there's always something fun and exciting and interesting.

And sometimes challenging situations you have to respond to.

There's plenty that I want to talk about one day about the kind of things we get.

Honestly, it ranges from, again, someone asking for a toy to extortion.

You get the full gamuts of- >> They hold the robots hostage?

>> Not the robots. They try to kind of ...

We've had cases where someone would ram into a robot and then they would go try to ask us for money.

>> Oh, gosh. Geez, people. - And you're like, "Listen, show us something real.

" I'll give you one funny example.

>> Yeah. - Someone reached out saying we broke their guitar.

I'm like, "What? That's really unfortunate.

Let's go pull the videos. Maybe the guitar was on the floor.

We didn't see it." So turns out they tried to vandalize the robot.

>> With the guitar? - Well, not intentionally.

The guitar was the sacrificial thing that kind of hit the robot after they kicked the robot.

And so the robot and them, they were not even on the same path.

They literally come out of their way.

They tried to kick the robot. They break their guitar.

Like, "What do you do with this?

" And then they're trying to make a big deal out of it.

And look, we actually replaced their guitar.

Listen, they said that this is their livelihood, we should be a good neighbor.

But also by doing so, we look guilty.

So now, they could even claim that it was actually ...

We have video, like this is- >> Ironic.

Right. And the robot isn't biased in any ...

>> It's the kind of thing you have to deal with, but I actually get up excited because we are the only ones dealing with this.

>> Yeah. - That's the value we are creating is how do you integrate robots to society?

How do you make them, again, friendly and fun?

How do you deal with the hesitations, the skepticism?

And as you're doing all this, you're building a lot of knowledge, you're building a lot of IP.

I don't think that the exciting stuff here is just the AI.

The AI is super important, but everybody's trying to make the AI.

It's when you take that AI and actually make it useful and deal with the real world problems. So to me, and I think to most of our team, we get up excited about solving problems like this.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

So what have you found as the most effective way of educating and welcoming a skeptic into the Serve Robotics community in that regard?

>> Well, again, it starts with design.

The human interaction side is really important.

>> Yeah, and they're so cute. Yeah.

>> I kind of feel like Hollywood really made our work challenging because there's so much negative perception about this dystopian future of technology, whatever.

So our thesis from the day one when we started was we have a few moments, few seconds to convert someone on the first impression.

When they turn around the corner and a robot is coming, they're going to have basically a moment to decide, are they excited or are they scared?

And if we can have them excited, that changes everything.

That first impression is 90% of the job.

So I think we've done that really well, to be honest.

Now, there's still going to be skepticism.

There's still going to be other questions.

There was a guy in Los Angeles who made a big following from taping robots, basically screaming at robots and taping it, basically.

It became a thing for him, which was a little bit disturbing at first, but then we got used to it.

It became funny. Anyhow, even he over time changed ...

He still does the videos, but there'd be multiple media interviews where they were looking for a skeptic and the guy is like, "Look, I don't mind them.

They're actually fine."

>> Right.

He's a comedian of sorts?

>> Yeah. So now, it's like, look, all we have to do is put our heads down, do the job, try to be thoughtful, try to do our best.

When we make a mistake, be honest about it.

And we have a company value.

It's called basically principle over perception.

So do the right thing and then figure out how to explain it to people.

But sometimes, people mix this two.

Sometimes you try to create a perception and you are not actually making the right decisions behind the back because you're worried about how it looks like.

So we always try to emphasize with the team, make the right decision first.

Forget about perception for a moment.

Let's do this separately.

Make the right decision, then figure out how to explain it to people.

>> Yeah. I think that's an outstanding piece of advice.

There were so many companies that just came to mind when you said that.

And the framing of things sometimes can be so confusing, I think, or misleading even more so in a lot of senses.

So, yeah, it is that warmth.

I love that the guy ended up not becoming a skeptic.

I mean, how could you not like? They're adorable.

You've done such a great job of humanizing them, but in a cartoon way that feels very- >> Non-threatening.

>> Exactly. - You look at pets.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So speaking of proud of you both as an analyst and as a friend yesterday, Jensen given you all the shout-outs.

There were multiple shout-outs for you guys.

Talk to me a little bit about that partnership, what it's like when you hear him mention your company.

>> Oh, it's pretty awesome.

I was telling you before, we started rolling that you don't even know it's coming.

So in fact, I wasn't watching the keynote.

I was, I think, about to go to the airport and I start getting these messages.

And I think he mentioned or showed the robots multiple times.

So he's amazing. I mean, I've been such a big Jensen fan.

We've been working with them since 2017 when we started.

>> Oh, wow. - Yeah. So obviously, we use the technology inside the robots, but Jensen has been bidding on robotics for a very long time.

>> Definitely. - He's one of these people who has been right so many times in kind of picking what's going to come next.

And robotics has been a big theme.

>> It's a great point. - But it doesn't start overnight.

So they saw something, I guess, in us.

And we obviously knew that NVIDIA is really the only way to go if you want to build the brain of these robots.

So we've been working with them for a long time.

They invested at one point when we were really early, honestly saved the company basically by investing when the market was down.

>> Wow. - There's a whole other story that I will share one day.

Not ready for it today, but Jensen and NVIDIA have had a huge role in bringing us here.

And again, the technology, the nice thing about it is every time we feel like, "Okay, we are running out of compute," NVIDIA comes up with a new chip, all we have to do is replace that probably at the same cost, sometimes even cheaper, you get more compute, you can keep developing rather than optimize.

>> Right. And with a partnership like that, you can have the confidence that they're going to continue to do that in the future as well.

>> That's absolutely right. Yeah.

>> When it comes to evaluating partnerships, I've been thinking about this with NVIDIA and Jensen, it's got to be a little challenging to know who to trust.

How do you identify the best allies for collaboration as you scale?

>> That's a really interesting question.

I think there's certain DNA that's easy to identify.

Usually, I think founder-led companies have that, or at least companies at that early stage because you get it.

You understand where this person is coming from.

Jensen has a story of someone else saving NVIDIA in the early days.

>> Oh, yeah. - And so I think once you've lived that, and then you see the culture in the organization in every interaction.

Every person you meet in a company is representing them.

So to me, it's always very important that every person representing Serve really embodies our values, but it happens organically where you attract those people, you set a certain tone internally, and that kind of is seen externally.

So sometimes, it's really easy to see that this person is transactional.

They only care about this one deal.

We had a partner that I was very, very excited with and one sales guy almost burned the entire bridge because at one point they thought they have leverage and they made an ask.

And I'm like, "You know what? You can't forget that, that this is how you were treated.

" Thankfully, we kind of hashed things out, but I really want to make sure we've worked with people who are not transactional, who are all looking at this long-term vision.

They're excited. They know that we can all help each other.

Obviously, NVIDIA is a big one. Uber is another one.

They're incredible companies, often again, born out of this tech sector that have that.

It's not about dividing the pie, it's about expanding the pie.

And I think if I can say this, there's a difference between San Francisco and New York.

>> There is. - The finance is usually transactional.

Usually, I win, you lose. Tech is usually expanding the pie.

If we work together, this gets bigger.

So as long as the company has the right values and DNA, it's not very hard to tell.

>> I think that's very astute.

And I agree with you, it is really about relationship building, especially when it comes to something like hardware and robotics.

What are some of the other robotics outside of your company that get you excited right now?

>> Obviously, there's a lot happening in humanoid robotics.

It's super exciting. They're fun.

I'm a little bit of skeptic about the timing.

I think we may be still a number of years away.

And on one hand, it's exciting that there's so much investment going in, and I'm super supportive of that.

On the other hand, if you are betting your own money or time, you want to time things right.

So the stuff that I kind of focus on more right now are things that are more custom to the application.

So a robot that can manipulate, but it doesn't need to look like a human.

Maybe it just needs one arm to be able to press an elevator button.

So those robots in hospitals are really interesting.

Robots in kitchens, there's a number of applications we talked about Autocado, which just cuts avocados, that sort of thing.

It's custom-made, high volume, absolutely helpful to, let's say in the hospital to nurses who spend so much time moving things around.

They should do patient care and you don't need to be a human-looking robot to help them.

You can actually have maybe wheels, and again, an arm that can open elevators and doors.

And you can solve a lot of the problems you need without having to over-engineer.

So those are the kind of robotics that I think in the next few years, we are going to see really a big scale up, just like we've seen with the delivery robots.

>> What task do you wish robots did in your house?

>> Oh, in my house. I just bought a new vacuum.

I mean, that's such a simple thing that still I feel like hasn't been figured out.

But Matic, if you've heard of them, I know the founders, amazing guys.

They've been added, I think the same amount of time as we've been working on Serve, but they just launched the product I think last year and it's doing great.

And this robot is cute, it's fun. It's really a big step-up.

So it started with something as simple.

Previous vacuums, a lot of the time I couldn't get it to do what I needed it to do.

It would get lost.

>> Roomba just went bankrupt.

>> That's right, unfortunately. Yeah.

>> Yeah. No, I kind of saw them as the beginning of that home robot.

>> They did. They created that first wave. Yeah.

>> They created a comfort in the market to let robotics into our home.

>> Absolutely. - And nobody even realized that people were doing that.

It's kind of like what you're doing. So RIP Roomba.

I'm sorry that, that happened to you, but I'm with you.

I want one to pack my suitcase for business trips.

If I never had to pack and unpack my suitcase again.

>> Loading the dishwasher, I think that's another big one. Yeah.

>> We don't even have a dishwasher at my house.

>> Wow. Okay. So washing the dishes. Oh, yeah.

>> Yeah. And we just got our first TV this week.

My boyfriend's a very patient, man. Thanks to him. Okay.

So are you looking forward to seeing anything?

I mean, there's a lot of hype right now, and there's particularly, especially coming from Jensen, there's a lot of hype around robotics.

What sort of applications ...

You mentioned the hospitals, but what sort of ...

For those of us not in those type of environments, in our everyday lives, where do you think we'll start seeing robotics next?

>> That's a good question. I mean, look, outside of autonomy, because I think with Serve, with Waymo, these things are everywhere now.

Yeah. Look, it's one of the things that takes a little bit of time.

You can't just turn it on overnight.

This AI, this disruption in AI that just happened, it takes a while to take that and put it in a physical robot and make it work.

But I think some of this companion robots that we've always heard about, they're finally feasible.

I'm not really tracking that space closely, but I think if there was a time for them to become a real thing, whether it's for the elderly or for kids, I mean, that's the moment right now.

These things are communicating with us for the first time.

They literally understand us. They can talk to us.

That's incredible. So I feel like there's a whole sector there that we should expect.

ANKI was an incredible robot, just a little bit too early.

There are so many folks from ANKI that are actually in our team and now helping us make our robots cute and fun and as innovative as ANKI was.

So I think there's going to be another goal on those type of robots that just seems to be the right time now.

>> Yeah. Super friendly buddies. Okay.

Outside of robotics, anything you're excited to see at the show here this week?

>> I mean, I want to go walk the floor.

I usually don't get a chance, but there's always a nice surprise or something you didn't expect, especially on the innovation side of things.

Lots happening in the auto industry, voice being integrated to things.

I know my friends and SoundHound are here.

I love seeing what they're doing.

I love to see the latest and greatest LiDARs and sensors and technology like that.

I'm sure Ouster would be here. So lots of friends.

We've been coming to this for a long time together and now we are all kind of getting to this point of scale and things getting real.

So it's really fun to run into that and reminisce about how far we've come.

>> And see your friends doing so much cool stuff.

I always think about that every year at CES.

I feel this mix of pride and joy when I'm here because everyone's really just crushing it.

>> Look how far we've come. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Look how far we've come.

Exactly. When did you start coming to CES?

>> Oh, I don't even remember.

It's been a while. 2013? Yeah.

>> Yeah. So we're about the same. Mine was 2012.

Definitively remember that.

And I've been here every single year.

>> I remember what a dream it was to come to CES.

Just having only seen it on TV and showing up. Yeah.

>> Oh, yeah. And the scenes of the big hall with all the people and you're like, "Really? All these people?"

like, "Really? All these people?"

>> And then you realize 90% at the time you're walking.

>> Right. In a casino kind of lost. Yeah.

>> Exactly, like today.

>> Like both of us were today.

And even my producer over here was also lost. All right.

Last question for you.

Actually, I have two questions for you. Final questions.

What is your advice to someone who is hearing all this buzz about robotics, never really thought about it before, or maybe they were intrigued, but didn't realize how tangible it was?

What would be your advice for them getting started on their robotics journey?

>> That's a really good question. I mean, depends, I guess, what do they say that overlap between what you're really good at, what you're passionate about and what the world needs.

So look for that overlap.

And I think robotics, it's going to change everything about our world, our society.

So just get involved. For me, it was projects at university.

The first day I showed up at UBC, I got to reach out to a bunch of profs.

I'm like, "Hey, I want to make the little soccer games, the Sony robot dogs that had a soccer league competition.

" And then two weeks later, I heard about DARPA challenge and I got invited.

So I joined that other team instead.

And I've been working on robots ever since.

So just get involved.

And in a way that you want to get up every morning and just go this, because this stuff is hard.

So you need to be passionate about what you're doing.

>> It is hard. Did you find the community welcoming when you jumped in?

>> Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those ...

Everybody is passionate. So there's so much online now.

Everything you want in open source, I mean, look at everything NVIDIA just announced yesterday.

So there's so much to work with now.

When we started, I remember getting the eyeball robot dog and not knowing how to even work with it.

The documentation was so complicated just to make it move.

Now, I mean, you can ask AI to write so much of the code and get you started and play and have fun.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I would say definitely play, and there's bloopers.

Weird stuff's going to happen. It's going to break.

It's going to say funny things.

It's going to run into the wall.

>> And you learn from those things. So I remember we made a little car that would loop around the circuit.

It was a competition and it was a 120th scale car and it was the dumbest AI that I think at the time we were using fuzzy logic, nothing machine learning, and it was just trying to avoid obstacles.

So if you picked it up, the wheels, they didn't know they're in the air.

They were still kind of squeak.

They were trying to avoid things. And I remember picking that up and thinking, "This feels like a pet.

It feels like it's scared."

>> Oh, yeah.

>> And that was one of the realization where your robots need to have this secondary non-purposeful function, like eyes that blink, wheels that twitch when it's nervous, because that's how people associate personality and humanity to it rather than just something that moves.

So a simple mistake, something that wasn't programmed, you pick it up, you see that up, and suddenly you learn something from it.

So that's where it plays so important.

Just get involved, have fun with it, and you never know what you're going to learn.

>> Yeah. I think that allegory, that humanization that you're talking about, I know exactly what you mean.

And you can even hear it in your car sometimes like, "Woo, she sounds a little spicy today.

" Come on girl, you're all right.

I mean, I guess it's combustion engine. Okay.

Last question for you.

When we are old and gray and wrinkly, so let's say many, many, many years from now, way into the future, what do you hope the robotics industry, what problem do you hope the robotics industry is challenging then?

>> I mean, that's an interesting question.

So if I like to look at history.

Actually, Ray Kurzweil's book really inspired me when I was younger to think about history in terms of something you can pick and measure.

And then you can go back, you think compute is something new, but no, Abacus was a computer.

So you can go all the way back and see how many operations per minute or hour can a human do and that trajectory kind of continues.

So this is kind of the same thing.

You can find an analogy and then build based on that what the future looks like.

In this case, I think what we did 100 years ago was scale our muscles, now we are scaling our minds, and the two things kind of go together.

It was really hard. When you scale the muscle without the mind, a human had to be attached to every machine.

When you scale the mind, now all sorts of new things are going to be enabled.

So the two things are actually going to have a compounding effect.

I don't think this is going to be the size of the last big step.

It's going to be even bigger because it's benefiting from that.

So the question is, how do vehicles change today?

After 100 years, I feel like that's how it's going to look like.

They still do change.

You still have something new and exciting and fun, whether it's suddenly moving from ICE to EVs. So this is going to be an ongoing iterative shape process.

I'm into cars and when I look at a Ferrari, I'm like, this is 100 years of just incremental evolution that's made this car to this beautiful thing that looks like a piece of art.

That's going to come. We are currently at a step function change moment, but then we get into this incremental thing that the humans cannot stop.

We are nonstop going to make this better for hundreds of years.

And I can't wait for it.

I think maybe we can slow down aging a little so we get to benefit from watching this happen in a much longer timeframe.

>> Well, yeah, and robotics can help us be safer to extend our lifeline and health and everything else.

I love that for our obsession. I know exactly what you mean.

It's that fine-tuning, that one design line, that one shape, that one curve, that one facet.

Yeah, no, I think it's beautiful.

It's exciting and optimistic.

Okay, I have one more question for him. I'm just a liar.

>> You're going to be freaked out.

>> Sorry. No. I know. Well, I love talking to you because your brain is awesome.

And if you don't have an opinion about this, you don't have to answer this question, but what do you think about quantum?

And how is that going to impact robotics?

>> Oh, that's a left turn.

>> Yeah, I know. I realized that, but I was like, "Oh, actually, maybe an interesting ...

" We were talking about compute is where I- >> Yeah.

I mean, look, definitely not very educated.

I think I can talk about compute in general, but we've seen what NVIDIA has done.

I think the idea that there would be another breakthrough in how we do compute, it's very real.

It definitely is going to happen.

It's just a matter of time. Now, is quantum one of it?

Probably. I mean, there are a lot of brilliant minds have been working on this forever.

>> Some people trying to make that the case at least. Yeah.

>> Absolutely. And I think it's believable given all the work that has been done.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to if you have a step function change in compute, how is the world going to change?

If we had a step function change in AI, look at how different the world is.

If someone told me that, that kind of voice from Her was going to be real, even five years ago, I would've thought they're out of their minds, but look how real that is right now.

So I don't know what's on the other side of quantum, but it's one of those moments of singularity that I can't wait to experience.

>> Yeah. We're going to be doing things real fast.

>> Yeah. - It's going to be so fun.

>> Any more left side questions?

>> Yeah. What's your favorite color? No.

I couldn't help it. Well, because I think it was such a part of the conversation in technology a few years ago and it's kind of gone a little side, just quieter, but not because people aren't working on time.

robotics went through it. Everything goes through it. Yeah.

>> Well, and I was just thinking about how quickly your robots could adapt a thing.

Anyway, yeah. Now, we're just totally geeking out.

Thank you so much for making the time, especially last minute.

I know this was really great. So fun to talk to you.

And thank all of you for tuning in to our cover tour at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

My name's Savannah Peterson.

You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.