The partner who brings the demand also sets the terms
Uber has sold its entire stake in Serve Robotics, and Serve has told investors it does not expect to renew the delivery partnership when it expires in early 2027. Serve was spun out of Postmates by Uber, backed by Uber, and scaled on Uber's app. From the first quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2026, volume through that channel grew every single quarter. In the second quarter it fell, and the reason given was robot utilisation below expectations.
The detail worth sitting with is what the two companies actually disagreed about. Not the fee. The operating model — how the shared fleet gets coordinated, how merchants get integrated. Those are decisions about the terms on which work arrives. In a single-channel arrangement the party bringing the demand makes them, and the party holding the robots carries the utilisation risk without holding the controls that determine it.
Earlier this month we noted that Wayve built the driver and Uber brought the passengers. That division of labour is real and it works. This is the same arrangement several years on, at the point where one side's priorities move. Uber has partnered with or invested in more than thirty autonomous vehicle companies. Those relationships will not all end this way, but they all share the same shape.
Serve's answer was not to go and build its own demand. It was to add more of somebody else's — the other food partner whose volume grew by roughly half in the same quarter Uber's fell, and further partners since. That is the right answer. It is being arrived at under pressure, and paid for one integration at a time.
Where we sit
A channel that sets the terms of the work is not simply a source of volume. It is a party to how busy your day is, how your fleet is coordinated, and what your customer was promised before the job reached you.
Omnia is built so that the party holding the vehicles keeps those decisions. Connect once, and be reachable by several sources of work you have agreed to accept — on filters you set, and without a second integration each time you add one.