Zume

Zume Pizza was founded in 2015[1] by Chairman and CEO Alex Garden[2][3] and Julia Collins.[4][5] Started in an industrial building in Mountain View, California, by January 2020 it had expanded deliveries throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and also had offices in San Francisco and in Seattle, Washington.

The company used robots for many stages of pizza production.[6][7] Initially, humans shaped the pizza dough and added toppings; as of September 2016 the pizzas were cooked en route in a van equipped with 56 GPS-equipped automated ovens, timed to be ready shortly before arrival at the address, and then sliced by a self-cleaning robot cutter.[4][5][8] The company secured a patent on the cooking of food during delivery,[9][10] which includes predictive algorithms to anticipate customer choices, and planned to partner with other businesses to also provide other robot-prepared meal components, such as salads and desserts.[10]

Zume was successful in raising capital.[11] The company is reported to have raised $6 million in Series A investment funding in 2016, some from Jerry Yang[9] and some from SignalFire, a venture capital firm that identifies investment opportunities using machine learning.[7] In fall 2017, Zume Pizza raised $48 million in Series B funding.[12] In November 2018, the company raised $375 million from SoftBank, giving it a valuation of $2.25 billion.[13] In late 2019, some investors believed it was worth up to $4 billion.[11]

In April 2018, the company announced that it would be expanding beyond pizza and planned to begin licensing its automation technology.[14] It subsequently also began selling food packaging; it holds patents for sustainable pizza boxes.[11]

In early January 2020, Zume announced that it was ending pizza production and refocusing the company as a provider of packaging and automated production and delivery systems to other food companies; the changes entailed laying off 53% of the company's workforce,[11][15] and potentially more.[16]

• Official website