DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Cartken

Autonomous delivery-robot maker (Oakland CA; founded 2019 by ex-Google engineers) of six-wheeled sidewalk delivery robots (Courier) + a larger industrial…

Track Cartken
Founded
2019
HQ
Oakland, California, USA
Status
private (~$22.5M raised; Magna/Mitsubishi Electric-backed)

The verified answer

As of Aug 2026, DEPLOY verifies Cartken: 1 model, 2 deployments across 2 regions, $20.0M raised. 4 sources back the record.

CategorySidewalk delivery

Appears inLogistics robots

Funding

$20.0M

Models

1

Deployments

2

Overview

Autonomous delivery-robot maker (Oakland CA; founded 2019 by ex-Google engineers) of six-wheeled sidewalk delivery robots (Courier) + a larger industrial Hauler; pivoted growth to industrial robotics (2025).

Verified record

Verified deployments
2 deployments on file
Active incidents
None on file

Key facts

Product

Cartken Courier sidewalk delivery robot (+ industrial Hauler); U. Arizona campus, Uber Eats, Japan.

Pivot

Pivoted growth to industrial (Jul 2025); Melco ~100 Hauler SALE (Jun 2025).

Founders

Ex-Google engineers

Robot form factor

Six-wheeled sidewalk delivery robots

Data & sources

Press releases

2

News coverage

1

Web sources

1

4 sources backing this record.View all →

Models (1)

View all models →

Current platform

Cartken Courier

Cartken (Oakland, California; founded 2019 by ex-Google engineers from the Bookbot project, led by CEO Christian Bersch; about $22.5 million raised from investors including Magna International, Shell Ventures, and Mitsubishi Electric) makes six-wheeled autonomous sidewalk delivery robots. Its Cartken Courier is the original sidewalk bot carrying about 44 pounds at 3 to 6 miles per hour, joined by the larger industrial Cartken Hauler with a 660-pound payload and an indoor Cartken Runner. It ran campus and food sidewalk delivery at scale, including a 41-robot fleet at the University of Arizona via Grubhub and Uber Eats service in Miami and Tokyo, but in July 2025 it pivoted its growth focus from last-mile food delivery to industrial robotics, with food delivery continuing but no longer expanding. The registry records it at commercial maturity with a finding that corrects the sector's captive-service premise: Cartken is not a classic captive operator, its legacy campus business was robots-as-a-service, and its forward business is industrial robot sales, anchored by a multi-million-dollar order from Melco, a Mitsubishi Electric Group company, for nearly 100 Cartken Hauler robots placed on June 25, 2025, an outright sale rather than a service, following a first industrial customer in Germany's ZF Lifetec in 2023. The frequently cited figure of more than 50,000 orders at the University of Arizona is company and BusinessWire PR, with Grubhub corroborating the program but not the count, and the current fleet size, total lifetime deliveries, whether the roughly 100 Haulers have actually been deployed rather than merely ordered, and whether the Miami service is still live in 2026 are not verified.

sidewalkView model →

Cartken on the deployment map

View the global map

2 verified deployments across 2 regions, newest verified Jan 2023. Explore where Cartken's robots are operating, by place and type.

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View the full Cartken deployment record →

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Relationships

CCartkenCustomer

Explainers

Plain-language answers to the questions people ask about Cartken, from DEPLOY’s explainer library. Each is written in the language of the question and cross-checked against this registry.

What is a sidewalk delivery robot?
A sidewalk delivery robot is a small autonomous wheeled vehicle that operates in the sidewalk regulatory regime (not roads) for last-mile delivery of food, packages, and small goods. Per DEPLOY's framework, the cohort enumerates as: Starship Technologies (canonical scaled commercial, multi-country, millions of deliveries) + Coco + Serve Robotics (NASDAQ SERV; Uber Eats partnership) + Kiwibot + Avride + Cartken (hardware-sale; ex-Google founders; Mitsubishi + Uber Eats + Melco ~100-Hauler order) + Ottonomy (RaaS-lease ~$999/mo) + Refraction AI + Delivers AI + (Amazon Scout discontinued Oct 6 2022 + FedEx Roxo paused 2022 + Tortoise shut down 2023 as wind-down record). Business model spectrum: hardware sale (Cartken) vs RaaS-lease (Ottonomy + Refraction) vs captive service (Starship + Delivers AI). State-by-state regulatory variation is the canonical operational gate. Wind-down record is honest editorial signal, not smoothed.Read the full explainer →

Current leadership (4)

Founders (4)

See all founders across the registry →

Safety record

No incidents on record for Cartken.

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Operator customers (1)

Recent coverage

Cartken in third-party press

Why Cartken pivoted its focus from last-mile delivery to industrial robots - TechCrunch

Jul 20, 2025

Cartken Hauler autonomous robot launched for material handling - Engineering.com

Apr 16, 2025

Cartken autonomous robot facilitates indoor, outdoor material handling - CompositesWorld

Apr 15, 2025

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