Reworded Article Content:

European ride-hailing leader Bolt is expanding its service offerings by partnering with U.S. robotics company Starship Technologies to deliver food using self-driving robots. The initiative will kick off in Tallinn, Estonia later this year, where customers can order food as usual through the app and have it delivered by a compact, suitcase-sized robot. When the robot reaches your doorstep, you simply press a button to open it and retrieve your delivery.

Markus Villig, Bolt’s founder and CEO, emphasized that the company is dedicated to enhancing sustainable local transportation solutions. He highlighted Starship’s proven track record over the past five years and expressed enthusiasm about introducing the service to a broader audience.

Bolt, valued at $8.4 billion, has built its reputation by challenging Uber in key international markets, especially in the United Kingdom, and has diversified into other areas like online food and grocery delivery and e-scooter rentals. With approximately 100 million customers spread across 45 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, the company has raised over $2 billion from prominent investors, including Sequoia, the IFC (a World Bank unit), and the European Investment Bank.

Starship Technologies, headquartered in San Francisco and partly founded by former Skype executives, already operates autonomous delivery robots in the United States. In the U.S., these robots mainly serve college campuses through a partnership with Grubhub, and similar arrangements are underway in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, including with the British grocer Co-op.

Although several companies have experimented with robotic delivery—such as Amazon’s discontinued Scout project—this collaboration marks a significant step toward broader commercial deployment of autonomous food delivery technology. In Asia, Chinese firms like Meituan had already begun testing similar robotic delivery services in various settings, including offices and hotels.