XRobotics thinks it has cracked the code on getting pizza restaurants to adopt robotics.
The San Francisco-based robotics company built a countertop robot called xPizza Cube, which is roughly the size of a stackable washing machine, and uses machine learning to apply sauce, cheese and pepperonis to pizza dough. The machines, which lease for $1,300 a month for three years, can make up to 100 pizzas an hour and be retrofitted to work with pies of different sizes and styles like Detroit and Chicago deep dish.
“This saves like almost 70, sometimes 80% of the time for the staff,” Denis Rodionov, the co-founder and CEO of XRobotics, told TechCrunch. “It is just repeatable work. If you have a pepperoni pizza, you need to place 50 slices of pepperoni one by one.”
XRobotics is not the only company that has tried to introduce robotics into the restaurant industry — nor the only one focused on pizza.
Zume is the most notable pizza robotics company — if that can be considered its own category. The company raised more than $420 million in venture capital for its robotic pizza trucks, before pivoting to focus on sustainable packaging in 2020, and shuttering entirely in 2023.
Rodionov argues that they’ve been successful where other companies haven’t because they aren’t trying to fully transform the pizza-making process, as Zume was, but rather build technology to help existing pizza makers save on time and labor.
Because they are building assistive technology, as opposed to replacement tech, Rodionov said they’ve been able to keep their device small enough to fit in existing kitchens and priced at a level that pizzerias ranging from mom and pop shops to large chains, both of which the company counts as customers, could afford.
The company found this out the hard way. The company launched in 2019 and introduced the first version of the technology in 2021. XRobotics’ first robot was significantly larger, and could work with more than 20 toppings, and ran into the same problems as their competitors.
“We did a real pilot in the restaurant with our huge machine,” Rodionov said. “We learned a lot from that, and we figured out we needed a very small, compact solution. It was a bit scary. All the numbers, all the feelings, all the gut said you need to do this, not this. And we just followed the gut and said, ‘Yeah, we would go and make a smaller version,’ and it was tremendous success.”
XRobotics launched their current model in 2023. The company declined to share how many customers it has. The company said its robots are producing 25,000 pizzas per month, but how many customers that translates to is hard to calculate.
The startup also recently raised a $2.5 million seed round led by FinSight Ventures with participation from SOSV, MANA Ventures and Republic Capital. Rodionov said the company will use the capital to produce more units and install more robots for customers.
XRobotics is committed to the pizza industry, at least for now, Rodionov said, considering the sheer size of the market — there are more than 73,000 pizza chains in the U.S. alone. The company plans to expand to Mexico and Canada next.
“I love pizza, my co-founder too,” Rodionov said. “We have tested probably any pizza in San Francisco. Also, we test pizza in New York and Chicago.” Rodionov added that Detroit-style pizza, known for its square shape and crispy cheese crust, is his favorite.