How Cheese Became The Reason Why A Robot Pizza Startup Shut Down Despite $450 Million Funding

A robot pizza delivery startup that raised nearly $500 million in funding a few years ago recently shut down after a series of technological setbacks, as per American tech news firm The Information. And the reason behind failure is something which is the best part of any pizza: cheese.

Rollercoaster Years For The Pizza Startup

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Founded in 2015, the company Zume was one of many attempting to use robots to make pizza. The concept never took off, and the technology was plagued by technical challenges, such as keeping melting cheese from sliding off while the pizzas baked in moving trucks.

It's a shocking turn of events given the sheer amount of money it had got through investors (around $450 million), including SoftBank. And in an even broader sense, it once again shows that even as AI makes incredible strides in the market, practical robotics ventures remain difficult to sustain despite showing lots of promise.

The Cheese Slide Issue

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As it turns out, it's not easy to build a mechanical pizza. The robot pizza startup had been stumbling for years. According to Bloomberg, the company struggled to physically keep melting cheese from sliding off pizza pies that were being baked in its moving trucks.

In January 2020, the company cut over half its employees and switched to compostable packaging, based on the know-how of a southern California company it had acquired Pivot Packaging.

At the time, Zume CEO Alex Garden blamed the cuts on the pandemic and a number of deals that fell through, according to Insider.

Also Read: US Man Pays 10,000 Bitcoins For Pizza

Not The Only Robot Pizza Startup

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Surprisingly, the robot pizza industry is much bigger than one might think. The now shut down robot pizza startup Zume is only one of several robotic pizza-making companies in Silicon Valley that are trying to automate pizza-making.

For instance, Stellar Pizza, which was founded by former SpaceX engineers, is working on a robot that can make the dough, roll it out and cover it in various toppings before baking it, as per Futurism.

In a broader context, the stakes aren't exactly high either ¡ª despite the high amount of funding. "We¡¯re not trying to be the Italian, fresh-out-of-the-oven, Neapolitan pizza," Stellar Pizza CEO and co-founder Benson Tsai, who has been headhunting other SpaceX alumni for his new venture, admitted to Bloomberg earlier this year, adding that the company is aiming to compete with Domino's, rather than high-artisanal pizzerias.

It remains to be seen whether it will fly and remain feasible or end up biting the dust like many other startups.

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