The $500 million robot pizza startup you never heard of has shut down, report says

• A robot pizza startup that raised almost $500 million has shut down, The Information reported.
• Zume aimed to automate the pizza-making process and raised funds from the likes of Softbank.
• The company struggled with technological problems before changing its business model.

Zume, the robot pizza delivery startup that raised close to $500 million, has shut down, The Information reported.

The company was founded in 2015 and aimed to automate the pizza-making process, but suffered a series of technological difficulties. It then changed its business model and tried to become a sustainable-packaging manufacturer.

The failure comes despite Zume raising hundreds of millions from investors including Softbank and AME Cloud Ventures, per Crunchbase.

According to The Information, Zume was “insolvent,” and Sherwood Partners, a restructuring firm, had been instructed to sell the company’s assets. It ceased trading in May, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, per the report.

Zume had struggled with problems like stopping melted cheese from sliding off its pizzas while they cooked in moving trucks, per Bloomberg. Its difficulties led to a string of high-profile departures and financial problems.

It made a series of layoffs in 2020, cutting headcount by more than 500 employees — including all of its robotics and food-delivery truck business, Insider previously reported.

In a leaked email seen by Insider at the time, cofounder and CEO Alex Garden blamed the job cuts on a series of funding deals that had fallen through, as well as the economic impact of the pandemic.

Zume did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.