Zach Rash wished to be an expert surfer. A lot so, that in highschool, there was extra browsing than lecturers.
That every one modified when Rash reached UCLA and met Brad Squicciarini. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the 2 spent each waking hour collectively in a small room constructing robots.
“We spent like our complete life on this like field at UCLA with no home windows, and we’re simply constructing robots from scratch, and it was the very best job ever.”
Ultimately, the actual world got here knocking as Rash and Squicciarini graduated and needed to discover jobs. After making use of for most of the similar positions, they finally determined they need to simply begin their very own robotic firm.
“We simply had plenty of actually robust opinions about what it will take to get these items into the world and make them helpful. So… determined to do it ourselves.”
Coco launched in early 2020. “We began constructing them in our lounge and we couldn’t get extra wheels… so it was a little bit of a sketchy robotic.” Nonetheless, their first service provider deployment went easily. “The primary day of the enterprise, I imply, we gave it to a service provider and Brad and I simply took turns driving it and fixing it.”
They confronted steep financing challenges: “We didn’t have any cash… Even in case you’re solely constructing a couple of, you understand, it’s nonetheless going to value you tens of hundreds of {dollars}.” They pitched greater than 200 traders earlier than elevating a modest $50,000 to begin. “We thought that was some huge cash and we constructed a couple of robots with that and type of proved out that we might run a service, not simply construct the robotic.”
Their persistence paid off. In June 2025, Coco raised $80 million, led by angel traders Sam Altman and his brother Max, alongside Pelion Enterprise Companions, Offline Ventures, and others.
This introduced Coco’s whole funding to over $110 million, which Rash says the corporate plans to make use of to scale its operations and know-how.
“Coco Robotics will use the brand new funds to enhance the know-how and to scale up its fleet,” Rash advised TechCrunch. “The corporate expects to go from low‑hundreds to 10,000 robots by the top of subsequent yr.”
Based on the corporate, Coco bots have delivered over 500,000 gadgets up to now, working with retailers like Subway, Wingstop, Jack within the Field, Uber Eats and DoorDash.
It’s solely been a couple of quick years since Rash was largely involved about browsing, however now, armed with funding and plenty of curiosity from retail companions, he’s able to journey to the wave of progress of his robotic supply firm.
“We’re constructing as many as we are able to as quick as we are able to.”
Zach shall be talking at SKS 2025 tomorrow, so be sure that to get your tickets. You possibly can hearken to our dialog on the most recent episode of The Spoon podcast beneath, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
