Summary
Ali Kashani is the co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics, which operates a large-scale fleet of autonomous sidewalk delivery robots for Uber Eats and other partners. He founded the initiative in 2017 as a robotics division inside Postmates, led its 2021 spin-out into an independent company after Uber acquired Postmates, and took it public on the Nasdaq in 2024. Before Serve, he co-founded the smart-home energy-monitoring startup Neurio Technology.
Career
Kashani was born in Tehran, Iran, and left at 17, moving to Vancouver, Canada, two years later to study at the University of British Columbia. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. in Robotics from UBC, supported by Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship there from 2011 to 2012 (Serve Robotics investor relations; Van Tech Journal).
While still based in Vancouver, Kashani co-founded Energy Aware Technology — later renamed Neurio Technology — in 2005 alongside Janice Cheam, Colby Gore, and Jonathan Hallam, serving as the company’s software lead and later chief technology officer. Neurio built a Wi-Fi-connected sensor that clipped into a home’s electrical panel and used machine-learning algorithms to identify which individual appliances were drawing power, without requiring a sensor on every device. The product’s 2014 Kickstarter campaign raised over $130,000 in its first two weeks against a $95,000 goal, and Neurio went on to be featured by Fast Company and other outlets before its 2019 acquisition by Generac Power Systems (NYSE: GNRC) (Kickstarter; BCBusiness).
After Neurio, Kashani spent time as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Pear VC in Silicon Valley, before founding Lox Inc. in January 2017. Postmates acquired Lox within months, bringing Kashani on as Vice President of Special Projects and Head of “X,” an internal division he used to explore a question he has described as central to his thinking: why move two-pound burritos with two-ton cars. That team built and piloted early Serve-branded sidewalk delivery robots in Los Angeles, and by the end of 2020 had completed more than 10,000 contactless deliveries for Postmates during COVID-19 restaurant shutdowns (TechCrunch).
Uber acquired Postmates in 2020 for $2.65 billion, and Kashani subsequently convinced Uber’s leadership to let the Postmates X team spin out as an independent company. He co-founded Serve Robotics in January 2021, with Uber contributing intellectual property and a capital investment in exchange for an equity stake, and has served as its CEO since. Under his leadership, Serve built commercial partnerships with Uber Eats, 7-Eleven, and others, signed a 2022 agreement to deploy up to 2,000 robots for Uber Eats, went public via reverse merger in 2023, and uplisted to the Nasdaq under the ticker SERV in April 2024. In January 2026, Kashani led Serve’s acquisition of hospital-logistics robot maker Diligent Robotics, the company’s first expansion beyond sidewalk delivery (TechCrunch).
Kashani holds 15 granted or pending patents. In June 2025, he was named a Bay Area Entrepreneur Of The Year by Ernst & Young, an award for which he became eligible for national-level recognition, and he has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, and other outlets discussing autonomous delivery and the broader application of AI to physical robotics (Serve Robotics investor relations).
Source Notes
This profile draws on Serve Robotics’ investor-relations biography of Ali Kashani, contemporaneous TechCrunch reporting on Serve’s 2021 spin-out from Uber, a long-form Van Tech Journal profile of Kashani’s personal history, and archival coverage of his earlier startup, Neurio Technology (formerly Energy Aware Technology), from its 2014 Kickstarter campaign and BC Business. Some early biographical and Neurio-era details are self-reported by Kashani and have not been independently corroborated beyond contemporaneous press coverage.